You and I have an enemy and his name is Good! My first encounter with this enemy was while I was growing up playing sports, but that would only be the beginning of a long love/hate relationship.
I learned that you could become good at something, do and be enough to get by, and then get comfortable. It has happened to me in sports, education, relationships, business, health, finances and a dozen other areas.
The process starts out innocently enough. We strive to be good at something, and we start doing the work and putting in the effort to do so. Then at some point in the process, we stop growing, stretching and doing the uncomfortable things we did to get to that point. In other words, we start to coast! We get comfortable with the success we have achieved, and we forget to continue doing the things that got us there.
In school, they graded us with ABC’s, and in life those grades still apply, but they look like this:
World Class = A
Great = B
Good = C
We have the false impression that good is good! However, I have never heard of a college courting C students and offering them scholarships, or a company offering a high level job to them.
The best translation for good is AVERAGE! That is the very definition of what C students are…They are AVERAGE. They produce AVERAGE work, AVERAGE study, AVERAGE effort, and so they receive AVERAGE investment. NO one wants to hire, marry, partner, promote, or pay AVERAGE.
Good has become our enemy because it deceives us into believing that we are better than we are and tricks us into living on past accomplishments.
Before the economy crashed in 2008, I was very comfortable in sales. I was making a lot of money, but it was all based on efforts of the past. I was comfortable being GOOD, and it all crashed around me when the economy took a nose dive and exposed my AVERAGE work ethic.
Don’t settle for Good (C grade), when with a little extra consistent effort you can become Great or even World Class (A or B grades).
Find Your Passion and You Will Find Your Life!