Too much of a good thing

This afternoon, I planned to go to a nice Brazilian BBQ dinner with some friends.

In the hours leading up to it, I got super excited.

I love meat. Steaks, sausages, pork, chicken, burgers, it’s all good. I kept picturing the BBQ, and how good it would taste. On top of that, I had a small lunch. By the time dinner time rolled around, I was all ready to demolish the Brazilian BBQ.

We got there, sat down, and began.

A spicy chicken drumstick? Mmmm…

A chorizo sausage? Yes please.

Top sirloin? Filet mignon? Chicken breast? Chicken hearts? Hell yeah.

And then it began.

The meat didn’t change at all. Yet with each bite, it began to taste worse. It started slowly, and then became more and more evident, until I wasn’t enjoying the meat at all.

Still, they kept coming around with more meat. It looked so good. I couldn’t stop asking for another helping.

Fast forward 20 minutes and I was gone. I wasn’t even stuffed. The meat just didn’t taste good at all. I started to eat the bread. And the pineapples.

Anything but the meat.

There is nothing more demoralizing than being destroyed by something you love. I’m glad that things in life don’t just flow to me as easily as the meat at the Brazilian BBQ.

Uggghhhhh. Too much of a good thing just isn’t that awesome.

–

P.S. This is post number #26 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix, your daily mix of food for the soul. Request an invite now for free access to the public beta!

The best motivation for personal development

In theory, personal development sounds good to many people. We all aspire to be some version of great. Why not be the greatest that you can be?

In practice, things can be difficult. Real life challenges get in the way. We have our own interpersonal and intrapersonal challenges. We all have busy lives. We already have our own habits.

Where do we get the motivation to change?

There are extrinsic benefits such as looks, money, power, and respect. There are intrinsic benefits such as mastery, confidence, and control.

You would think that some combination of extrinsic and intrinsic benefits would be good enough for people to change.

For some, it is. If you have great willpower, and want the best for yourself, you will figure out how to make it happen. If you want to make things slightly easier for yourself, Daniel Pink has popularized the notion the intrinsic motivation is often more effective than extrinsic motivation.

Yet, for many, these motivating factors aren’t enough.

You know what is even more powerful?

The prior intrinsic and extrinsic motivating factors are focused on the self. What seems to be even more powerful is to focus on those that we care about.

Best friends? Yes, many of us will do things to help our best friends that we wouldn’t do for ourselves.

It gets better with our parents, siblings, and with our spouses. Many would sacrifice large parts of their lives, or die, for their family.

One more step up, and we hit the jackpot: our children. They are our own offspring, are of our own blood, and are made in our image. Many people consider their children their legacy that will live on when they die.

People will will do amazing things to nurture and provide for their children. They will leave their friends and family, to move to a country that is better for their children. They will work multiple jobs for years to help pay for basic necessities, and then help out with the cost of college, if they can.

So where does personal development fit into the picture?

Providing necessities for a child is one thing. Properly nurturing a child is another.

Where does a child learn from in their most formative years? Their parents!

As the old adage says: like father, like son.

When it comes to your personal and psychological problems, you can easily fool yourself. Your friends and family may play it off. Or, they may not feel comfortable enough to seriously confront you with issues that matter.

But, you can’t fool the child. Your words mean nothing. Your actions mean everything. Your actions mirror who you are, and they define the world that your child grows up in.

You can’t help it. Your child can’t help it. It will just happen. You are their example for how to live life, and they are going to learn from you.

If anything, focus on personal development for your children.

Because if you ignore your own shit, you dump it on your children. Then they have double the shit to deal with; they’ve got your shit, as well as their own internal shit.

I know you want the best for your children (for future children). You are already going to raise them and feed them. That is the minimum.

Now make sure to work on yourself so that you’re also a fucking good example for them.

–

P.S. This is post number #25 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix, your daily mix of food for the soul. Request an invite now for free access to the public beta!

The easiest way to play the long game

Accomplishing something extraordinary involves doing things that other people won’t.

One way to do this is to be different. It allows you to naturally do things others won’t. An extreme example of this is being a Keyser Soze.

Another way is to choose the long game.

When people think long game, they often imagine the brilliant long-term strategist. The person one that sees the whole chess game, not just the next few moves. They see Francis Underwood from House of Cards.

This is one way to do it, but there is a far simpler way to play the long game.

Most people want stuff, but they don’t want it that badly. What they really want is a quick solution to their problem; the get rich quick scheme, the tips and tricks to a one night stand, the “lose 15 pounds in a month” program, the 6-week dev bootcamp, or acceptance into a 3-month startup accelerator.

The easiest way to distance yourself from others is to figure out what you really want, and then commit for the long term. Look at what other people will do and then commit yourself to double, triple, quadruple, 10x, or 100x it. The longer you go, the more the others will just fade in to the backdrop. They can’t help but fade away because they weren’t playing the same game as you.

This approach requires no genius. It only requires being relentless, something that anyone can start doing if they decide to.

Be Will Smith.

And who knows? As you continue, you just may just come up with your Keyser Soze or your Francis Underwood moves. Those will just become the cherry on top.

–

P.S. This is post number #24 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix, your daily mix of food for the soul. Request an invite now for free access to the public beta!

Dreamers, talkers, writers, and doers

Since I’ve quit my job for entrepreneurship, I’ve come into contact with many entrepreneurs (at conferences, meetups, meetings, in tech blogs, etc).

Internally, I’ve begun to categorize entrepreneurs based upon how often they assume four identities. It has been a helpful way for me to mentally differentiate between what people do, and how serious I should take them.

Here are the four identities that entrepreneurs may assume.

1. Dreamers

Entrepreneurs may dream about quitting their job, starting something, and changing the world. This is aspirational, and can be highly motivational, but isn’t practically interesting until it turns into action.

A more valuable form of dreaming is to have vision. It involves the ability to dream up something to create, as well as dream up an alternate reality with their creation in it.

All startups are difficult and involve a lot of work. The difference in startups is in the value they bring to the world, and having the vision to understand this value in the early stages of a startup is very interesting as well as valuable. Still, similar to the aspirational dreaming, having vision also doesn’t matter unless it turns into action.

2. Talkers

The easiest thing to do beyond dream is to talk. That is why there are a lot of talkers.

There is an entire range here, from small-time talkers to big-time talkers.

Small-time talkers may include the aspirational dreamers. You find them at parties and at meetups talking away at what they’d like to see in the world. For the most part, these people are harmless, although not particularly interesting.

Small- to medium-time talkers may involve people doing stuff, but haven’t quite made it. Or people that have done stuff, but just happen not to be huge promoters. Some of these people can be quite interesting, usually because they are doing something that is interesting.

The big-time talkers can pretty much find a way to make a career out of talking. They find a way to gain a large following, and make their thoughts and opinions heard. Usually, this also involves being a writer (the next identity).

A key way to differentiate between big-time talkers is to look at how much they promote themselves versus how much they give.

Promoters aren’t interesting. They have found a way to gather a huge blog following, Twitter following, etc. without providing much value (there are lots of tricks you can play here). On the other hand, givers are very valuable. They talk a lot, but their words carry weight and impart wisdom.

The difference between promoters and givers usually boils down to experience. Givers have done stuff, and they speak because they have a background to speak from.

3. Writers

Writers are talkers that have put their words down on paper (or blogs).

There is one key difference with writers though. Writing is an act of doing. It involves creating (hopefully) interesting thoughts and translating them to a product of written word. This is one of the big reasons I encourage all entrepreneurs to blog; blogging is a form of creation, and the job of an entrepreneur is to create things of value.

As with talkers, there are small-time and big-time writers. And there are promoters versus givers who are usually differentiated by their experience doing shit.

4. Doers

Finally, we get to the doers. This involves the act of getting shit done.

One way to differentiate doers is by depth. There are dabblers, and there are people who can focus and make significant progress on something. Dabblers aren’t interesting. People who can focus are.

Another way to differentiate between doers is how much they have done. More is usually better. At the very least, doing builds experience.

The best way to differentiate doers is in the value they have created. This is more dicey. It is easy to create stuff. Creating value is a whole different beast, and much more difficult.

The most interesting doers are the ones who have gotten shit done, and created real value.

Judging entrepreneurs.

‘Judge’ is a harsh word, but honestly, we all do it.

I meet entrepreneurs, and categorize them based upon how much they dream, talk, write, and then do.

Many entrepreneurs do all four. I sure do. But how much do they do each of these four?

Dreaming, talking, and writing are all fine, but the dominant factor is doing.

The best way to judge entrepreneurs is simply by how much they are doing, and how much value they have created as a result. I’ve been writing a lot recently, but certainly judge myself this way.

–

P.S. This is post number #23 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix, your daily mix of food for the soul. Request an invite now for free access to the public beta!

The power of being different

different-fish

I believe that humans are aspirational creatures. Deep down, we hope that in some way, we will be extraordinary. We want to believe that we will make our own positive little (or big!) dent in the world. It helps to give life meaning and purpose.

The thing is, the path to being extraordinary involves being different.

You need to do something, believe something, or simply be something that is not ordinary.

This isn’t always easy. In fact, most of the time, it is fucking difficult.

It requires that we step away from what most people do, and walk our own path. And when we do so, others may look at us as if we are strange. At the worst, they will laugh, snicker at, or bully us because hey, who are we to be different?

On my transition from academia to entrepreneurship.

Recently, I have been reflecting a lot on my transition from academia to entrepreneurship. It was definitely a large transition; especially because most of my friends don’t understand and/or appreciate the startup world.

The weird thing is that although some people laughed at me and discouraged me, I realized that internally, the change was actually pretty easy.

I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think I know why.

I have always just been different.

I don’t mean being different in a good way. For example, I’ve always been more athletic than most. Luckily for me, being athletic is a big advantage as a kid.

I mean being different in a bad (or potentially bad) way.

Here are three examples:

  1. I used to stutter badly as a kid. Stuttering is not a cool thing. It gives people a really quick way to make fun of you. And what are you going to do in response? Begin speaking and stutter more? These days, I’ve learned to handle it pretty well, but as a child, it was an uncontrollable disadvantage in life.
  2. I can’t function in the morning. I’ve always been this way. Waking up early in high school sucked. In college, I rarely made morning classes. At work, I would occasionally sleep through morning meetings. And when I made them, my brain was slow. In the early mornings, I am always groggy and cold. Come midnight, my body is warm and I have energy. I am convinced I have delayed phase sleep syndrome, a case where your circadian rhythm is shifted from normal.
  3. I am more positive and laid back than most. My theory is that I just have a different world outlook than most. In my mind, we are here to live as well as we can in our time on this pale blue dot. I just don’t care about as many details as many others seem to. I’m here to have a good life. That shit you consider a problem? Yeah, its not such a big problem. Many friends who know me well just write it off that I am “well, just being Alex”. This isn’t necessarily bad, but somehow it occasionally gets  twisted around to be bad in social situations. My usual reaction? I don’t really care. Why? It just doesn’t matter that much.

These are three cases (and I’m sure there are more) where I am naturally different than most people. Each of them can be a mild or huge disadvantage. It means that I will be occasionally picked out of the crowd because I am weird. It means that I can’t function on the same schedule as many in the corporate world.

I never could fully fit in with everyone, because I’m different than them. At first, it used to bug me. But over time, I’ve learned to accept and embrace the differences.

I am just different, and there is really no other way to handle it but be me.

A gift in disguise.

Being different, accepting it, and living with it has turned out to be a great gift.

Why? Once I’ve learned to live with it, being different isn’t scary any more.  It doesn’t require any courage. It doesn’t bother me.*

Being different is my normal.

It lets me do things that others don’t. When I want to try something new, or be something new, I can just do it. I may be different, and others may notice it; they may even comment on it, or laugh at it, but who cares? Being different is fine by me.

In reality, we are all different, whether it be race, class, social status, sexual orientation, personality, looks, personal hobbies/interests, whatever.

The big difference is how we choose to deal with these things. And I say “choose”, because it is a choice. We can either deny ourselves, try to conform, and make ourselves miserable. Or, we can accept it, learn to live with it, and as a consequence, learn how to be different.

Choose the latter. Learn to be different, and learn to embrace it.

Make different the new normal. Therein lies an incredible source of power.

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* Unless I’m cranky because I woke up early that day. Then all bets are off.

P.S. This is post number #22 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix, your daily mix of food for the soul. Request an invite now for free access to the public beta!

How goals can be limiting: or, how I failed myself by achieving a goal

In my last post, I wrote two short stories about two goals that I had in the past that resulted in different outcomes.

The first was on my failure to make the California state track & field meet in high school, and the second was on how I accomplished my goal of getting at least 3-4 top-tier conference papers in grad school.

I should be happy with reaching the second goal. However, in retrospect, I don’t feel very good about it. In fact, I mentally beat myself up about it sometimes.

Why?

Because I failed myself in the process of achieving the goal.

Here is how.

Two problems with goals.

Goals can be highly motivational, but they can also have unintended negative consequences. Here are two that I experienced.

First, the goal may shift your priorities, and cause you to optimize for reaching the goal instead of optimizing for what you should really focus on.

In my case, the focus on paper count negatively changed my priorities. Instead of focusing on finding the big problems, I quickly learned how to spot ideas that were highly publishable. Instead of examining the problems as thoroughly as I could, I did the minimum amount of work necessary to create the data for a paper. In academia, we call these LPUs (Least Publishable Unit). I became very good at creating a LPUs around novel and publishable ideas.

This isn’t good. I would have served myself better by finding big problems and tackling them as thoroughly as I could.

Second, by attaining the goal, you may actually fall short of your potential.

Partway through my PhD, I transferred from the University of Colorado to Northwestern University. My expectation was that I’d graduate in 3 more years at Northwestern. I left Colorado with one top-tier paper under my belt, and hit Northwestern in full stride. In the first year there, I got two more top-tier papers.

Yes, that means I reached the goal!

So what did I proceed to do? I got comfortable. The next year, I published one paper, and the final year, I got a short paper into a top conference. I count all of those as 4.5 top-tier papers.

I blew past the goal of 3-4 top-tier papers, but when I look back on it now, it doesn’t feel good. I know I could have done way better than that if I continued to push.

My goals and their unintended outcomes.

I’m not ashamed of my grad school days. I am pretty proud of the progress, and still like some of the work I did. But I know I was capable of more, and I hate knowing that.

You remember the first goal of making the California state meet? The one where I failed?

The funny thing is that I regret not making the state meet, but I don’t regret anything else about it. I certainly don’t feel bad about the failure. I know that I trained as hard as I could, and I feel confident that I didn’t leave much at the table.

In short, my failure was a success, and my success was a failure.

I’ve learned my lesson.

These days, I don’t focus much on goals anymore.

I focus on execution. I focus on learning. I focus on my craft. I focus on being good. And then being better than that. And then better.. and better..

When I work this way, I’m always proud of myself. I don’t say it in a trite “feel-good” sort of way. I feel genuinely proud because I am trying as hard as I can.

What else can you ask for?

Occasionally, I’ll hit a milepost (which could be considered a goal). I acknowledge it, and then pat myself on the back to celebrate the progress. But then I keep moving forward because moving forward is the right thing to focus on.

–

P.S. This is post number #21 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix, your daily mix of food for the soul. Request an invite now for free access to the public beta!

The simple secret to achieving your goals

achieve-all-your-goals

I recently wrote a recent post on the simple secret to creating new habits.

For those who missed it, or are too lazy to read it, here is the quick one-line summary: change your wants to wills.

It really is simple. If you have decided that you will create a new habit, then it is decided. In the last post, I decided that a blog post will get published each day. So today, there is no doubt about it. I procrastinated until the end of the day (again!), but now I am writing and it this post will get published.

Today I’m writing about the simple secret to achieving your goals.

Guess what? Same answer. For the same reason 🙂

Now don’t go about setting ridiculous goals. You aren’t going to fly like Superman tomorrow. But in general, the simple trick holds true.

I could just end the post here, but I’ll finish up with two stories.

1. Grad school and the publication bean count.

I entered grad school with the dream of ending up as a professor. I did all my background research and came to the conclusion that most professors at reputable schools had finished their PhD with 2-3 top-tier conference papers. I figured that since I was at the University of Colorado (which wasn’t a Stanford or M.I.T.) it might help to up that count. So, I made it my goal to graduate with 3-4 top-tier conference papers.

I’ll spare you the montage of all of my hard work. But, surprise, surprise.. at the end of my PhD, I accomplished my goal. I came out with 4.5 top-tier papers (one was a short paper), and was in a perfect position to go after faculty jobs!

Why did it happen? Because it was decided and I did everything under my control to make it happen.

(There is much more to the story, and I’ll write about it some day.)

2. The California State track meet.

I high school, I was a track & field junky. I did sprints and jumps, and specialized in the triple jump (I used to have some hops as a kid). My senior year, I decided that I was going to make the California State meet.

Again, I’ll spare the montage, but I was super hardcore with workouts everyday, and 2-4 hours in the weight room after workouts.

Top 3 in each section would go to state and in the sectional semi-finals, I had placed 3rd! In prior invitational meets, I had placed as high as 2nd. That means technically, there was a good chance I would go to state.

Unfortunately, the day of the sectional final, I had a bad day. The bad day, coupled with the flaring up of a prior injury (I got plantar fasciitis during the season), turned into a 5th place result.

FAIL.

Sorry, I lied. You won’t always achieve your goals.

Still, you might get pretty damn far. And I believe that I did. Hey look, I once was one of the top 100 triple jumps ever within the section. I also was MVP. (And now, I’m reminiscing about those good ol days.)

Even though I didn’t reach the goal, I’m proud of all the hard work that I put in. Building a hard work ethic always pays off, as it did when I decided to work hard in graduate school and get those publications.

Anyways, the message is the same.

You may not always achieve your goals, but you’ll put yourself in the best position to achieve them if you change your wants to wills, believe in yourself deep in your core, and then act like it.

Like the classic video below, you got to want it like you want to breath.

–

P.S. This is post number #20 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix, your daily mix of food for the soul. Request an invite now for free access to the public beta!

University and the academic/startup idea space

(Note: my academia-related posts are strongly colored by my experience studying computer engineering. Other fields will/may differ.)

I am not shy about my opinion that universities should be more active in the startup space.

Often, when I voice this opinion, I get the reply that academia and startups are just two separate things.

This is true.

But are they actually mutually exclusive? Or do they have a relationship closer to our friendly Venn diagram?

academic-startup-idea-space

I would venture to say that they look closer to this. Most of you would probably agree.

This means that there is some overlap.

Furthermore, this overlap is should be very interesting to universities. Why? Because businesses become the big movers and shakers of the world. They innovate. They create jobs. They generate the alumni that universities are so proud of. And more importantly, they generate the money that gets donated back to universities.

Where academia and startups overlap.

It is clear that academics should be interested in the red circle above; that is, the ideas that are academically interesting. That is the entire point of academic research.

The next natural question is: how large is the overlap with the ideas that are viable as a startup?

I can really only speak for the tech space, but that overlap may be larger than people think it is. Google and VMware are good examples of technology startups that sprang out of academic ideas. Many people may think that the big consumer apps aren’t academically interesting, but is it really true? Twitter is a new type communication protocol. Facebook is concerned with translating human networks into the virtual world. Apps like Instagram and Pinterest are very interesting from a design/UI/UX standpoint. I fail to see how these couldn’t be interesting academically.

The main problem is that most academics don’t make it their problem to work at the intersection, and even if they do, they don’t carry the project out to the real world. It isn’t really their fault. The problem is that it isn’t rewarded within the university system. But, this is a slight tangent.

Let’s not forget about that blue circle.

That isn’t even the whole picture. As of now, we have only considered the red circle of ideas that are academically interesting.

What about the blue circle of ideas that are viable as a startup?

Yes, these ideas aren’t all interesting to technical departments…

…but what about the school of business?

Shouldn’t that be their bread and butter? Shouldn’t the school of business be interested in all ideas that are viable startups, getting startups off of the ground, and then graduating them to full-fledged real operating businesses?

Of course!

What are universities doing?

Both of those circles in the academia/startup idea space are of concern to universities.

Stanford has understood this for a while. They have (1) cultivated the startup ecosystem over generations of entrepreneurs and businesses, (2) geared many business, undergrad, graduate, and design students towards startups, (3) spun up StartX (a startup accelerator), and (4) recently begun to actually invest in startups from their alumni.

I hope that in my lifetime, a few other universities realize this and place significant resources in this direction. It would do the universities, their alumni, and the entire world a whole lot of good.

–

P.S. This is post number #19 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix, your daily mix of food for the soul. Request an invite now for free access to the public beta!

The graduate school startup accelerator

My PhD stomping grounds where I should have been trying to build startups.

My PhD stomping grounds where I should have been trying to build startups.

(Note: my academia-related posts are strongly colored by my experience studying computer engineering. Other fields will/may differ.)

Being an academic-turned-entrepreneur puts me in the interesting position of continually second-guessing my prior academic career. In an effort to cover both sides of the story, I’ve already written a post on how my PhD has carried over surprisingly well into entrepreneurship, as well as a post on the two biggest differences between academia and entrepreneurship.

Aside from the similarities and differences, one question has constantly been on my mind.

Why couldn’t I have done a grad school for startups?

Look, I spent 5+ years as a funded graduate student. In those years, I met a lot of really good people, and was able to study almost anything that I wanted (granted that occasionally, I had to publish some research findings).

It was an intense period of time where I was learning rapidly and investing in my future.

I came out of those 5+ years with a PhD degree, a few good papers, and a gut instinct for interesting academic research that made me a candidate for faculty positions, industry research positions, and lots of other good tech jobs.

Pretty good right?

And let me re-iterate, I was completely funded for 5+ years! It wasn’t a lot of money, but enough to live a pretty good life.

Fast forward to the present.

What am I doing now?

I am 18 months into my new career as an entrepreneur. I am doing what I can to meet interesting people. I am learning whatever is necessary to create stuff, ship it, learn what works (as well as what doesn’t), and then iterate.

It is an intense period of time where I am learning rapidly and investing in my future.

It feels a whole lot like graduate school, with one big difference.

I am NOT funded. Instead, I am bleeding money.

But it is worth it. I know it is worth it because I am learning ridiculously fast. I can only imagine where I’ll be in a few years; that is, if I find a way to sustain monetarily.

So back to the question.

Why couldn’t I have done a grad school for startups?

It feels to me like a grad school which functioned like a startup accelerator would do a lot of good for the world.

I don’t mean an M.B.A. It is only 2 years, and the goal isn’t to build a startup during school. Plus, you have to pay for it.

I don’t mean a normal accelerator like Y Combinator, Techstars, 500 Startups, Angelpad, etc. These are three month programs to accelerate you to Demo Day, and then it is over. Yes, you are plugged into an amazing network, but it isn’t 5+ funded years to figure out how to do startups.

There has be something else. I’m pretty sure of it. I don’t know if it would be better off inside or outside of the university setting. But, it would be an interesting new direction for people to go (I may have to try one day when I have the resources).

I often imagine myself, and all of my academic buddies, with 5+ years of funded time to build startups. We were a good bunch, and I’m fairly confident we would have done some good shit. At the very least, we’d all gain valuable experience. But really — if we all had 5+ years to build and ship stuff? I bet at least one valuable business would have popped out the other end.

–

P.S. This is post number #18 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix, your daily mix of food for the soul. Request an invite now for free access to the private beta!

What’s wrong with being average?

It is easy to bash on the idea of “being average”. You hear it in personal development and success literature all of the time.

In theory, it sounds good. Why be ordinary, when you can be extraordinary?

In practice, things are quite different.

What does ‘average’ mean? Is it in your peer group? In your university or company? In your country, or around the world? Average for each of these groups can and will be drastically different. In general, ‘average’ is relative, and it is important to know what you are talking about when you speak averages.

Across any population, there will always be an average. And in many real-world distributions, the majority of the population will end up around the average. Even if you guaranteed “success” to everyone in the world, there would still be an average. It would just be shifted up. In that case, is it so bad to be average? Statistically, most people will fall around an average. Telling everyone not to be average is a little strange.

Average isn’t necessarily good or bad. I am  very near the average height and weight. What does that mean to you?

Average doesn’t encompass your life story. If you were raised by homeless parents, but through hard work got to a position where you made an average American salary, what does that mean? Is it extraordinary or average?

Average doesn’t encompass your ambitions. Two people may have average American jobs. One might be doing it to support his meth habit, and the other is using it as a career stepping stone.

Average seems to simplify and summarize a person down to a simple characteristic: average or un-average. In all actuality, there are so many different sides to a person I don’t even know where to start. What if you are average in most dimensions, but extraordinary in one?

In the end, talking about averages clouds the issue.

Defining a person by averages doesn’t mean anything.

So, what has meaning? Having the self awareness to know what you are, and what you want to be.

Is the average career OK with you? Glad you know what you want. Go for it!

Do you want to be the best damn parent that you can be? Well, forget about the average, and be the best damn parent that you can be.

Repeat this across all aspects of your life, and you’ll be set.

Chances are you will be some kind of average in many aspects in life. Statistically, that is how it works out. You may also be extraordinarily awesome or un-awesome in some aspects of life.

Again, it all doesn’t matter: just know what you are and what you want to be.

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P.S. This is post number #17 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix, your daily mix of food for the soul. Request an invite now for free access to the private beta!