Category: Personal Development

A Mountaineer At 30

Posted on by Greg
A Mountaineer at 30
A Mountaineer through the years – from left: My sister and I on Halloween circa age 9 for me, 6 for her (she later shed all that fur); me playing in the West Virginia University Marching Band at age 20; your intrepid blogger at home in Sydney on the cusp of 30.

Tomorrow I turn 30 and it has me thinking some thoughts, man.

This occasion means I’ve lived 10,950 days, which is kind of a mind-boggling number that is a lot more fun if you think of days as jelly beans. If I draw out a perfectly average lifespan, I’m 37% of the way there.

Which is not to say that I’m in a hurry about this.

Over the course of all those jelly beans I’ve stumbled across some valuable ideas. Some of these were gleaned from personal experience and some are truths passed on by others. Some have stuck with me from past successes and some were derived from failures. I jotted a few down over the course of the past week and surprised myself when I tried to recall the genesis of a few that – for better or worse – have stuck with me to this day. More than a handful of these ideas, thoughts, lessons, values, affirmations (I’ve included a bit of each!) go all the way back to my early childhood but are still relevant to my everyday life. Brainstorming this post turned out to be an interesting way to celebrate the big three-oh.

In no particular order, here are the notions most relevant to me as I turn 30:

Do things for yourself first

I’ll go a touch meta with this one and use this blog as an example. I’ve just started, so my readership is not what you might call “substantial”. But I’m writing this because I derive a great amount of satisfaction from doing so. I like personal development. I like writing. I like web design. I like taking photos of pillows named Rupert. This blog can never be a failure because I’m doing it for myself first and by sticking true to that idea I hope that it will come to empower others. It leads into…

Take something seriously and it will pay you back

I would suggest you start by taking yourself seriously. After all, if you don’t take yourself seriously, why would anybody else?

By taking your passions seriously, you’re breathing undeniable life into them that other people will be drawn and connected to. If you write, you’re a writer – own it, live it and get to work. Others will respond.

Don’t be an asshole

It seems simple enough, but so many people get this wrong. It’s not even about being over-the-top nice to everybody you encounter, it’s just about not being a jerk. If you can make it through life sticking to this rule, you’re doing well.

Serve others

Your actions often have consequences for other people, so it stands to reason that those people should be more than a passing consideration of yours. Having a little social awareness will go a long way and seeing as most people are too busy looking at their phone to be aware of themselves, it’s becoming a bit of a lost art. This is less about random acts of kindness, volunteerism and charity (although you can feel free to go that far if you’re able) and more about being a good citizen; a member of a community. Be aware of your environment and strive to make it better for the people who share it with you. It’s a certain kind of heroism that we’re all capable of achieving.

Listen

As in, really listen – don’t just listen for your cue to speak again. It’s called ‘active listening’ and is something I’ll be exploring in later blog posts. Listen between the lines, ask intelligent questions about what the other person is telling you about. They’ve taken the time to explain it to you so the least you can do is attempt to get the message as purely as you possibly can. You’ll probably learn something in the process and you’ll find that people have a lot more time for you in the long run. Good listeners beget people who will want to listen to them in return.

Lessons come from unexpected places

Some of the ideas I’m sharing on ToVa come from truly unusual sources, including webcomics, sports, and movies. None of these are typical destinations for those seeking actualization but if I had not had enough presence to distill lessons from them I would have missed out on some truly valuable gems. To this end, I don’t understand the phrase “turn off my brain” when it comes to relaxing. If I don’t need my brain to enjoy this activity, why am I doing it in the first place?

Unselfishly consider the lives of others

We’ve all been told to walk a mile in another person’s shoes before passing any judgement but here’s the thing: our limited perspective of another person’s reality is far from perfect. How can we possibly know everything that is going on in somebody’s life – even those closest to us? My fiancée and I know each other better than we know anybody else and yet we occasionally surprise each other. I can never know everything going on her head (and she’s probably OK with that).

My own take on this is just to be less selfish in our consideration of others. Everybody has a lot going on and you can never understand all of it. Who are you to say what kind of actions are ‘out of character’ for somebody else? Help to the fullest extent of your capacity, but respect that there are forces at work here that have nothing to do with you. If the other person wants you to have a better understanding, they will let you know.

Give second chances

Following from the above notion, give people as long of a rope as possible. I have been criticized for giving people too many chances in the past but I would have missed out on some truly valuable friendships if I were in the habit of cutting people off at the first sign of trouble. We’re all (presumably) doing our best, so be willing to cut people some slack.

The ‘Golden Rule’ is not a system of justice

We’ve all heard it: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It’s solid advice, as long as you stay true to the intent and meaning. Unfortunately, a fair amount of people take this phrase to mean ‘an eye for an eye’ when it actually means exactly what it says: be good to people just like you’d want them to be good to you. It doesn’t say “be good to people who are good to you” and definitely doesn’t suggest you can be bad to people who are not good to you.

This is about being the bigger person in all instances. Do the right thing because it’s the right thing, not because you anticipate it will earn you a reward. If your efforts are met with disregard or a lack of appreciation, that doesn’t change anything – you would still want others to do good upon you, so that’s what you have to keep doing unto them. See also: “don’t be an asshole.”

It is only possible to live in the present

This idea comes from the philosophy of Alan Watts and has significantly reduced my overall level of anxiety since I first happened upon it late last year. My own take as I’m about to explain it is a bit reductive, but powerful all the same.

Our lives and actions are only ever occurring in the present moment. We can think back on the past and access our memories, but doing so is a ‘present’ activity. We can likewise attempt to forecast the future based on our comparisons of the past to the present (or by any other means) but the future isn’t real until it becomes the present. It gives real teeth to the idea of leaving the past in the past. The past is only relevant if you actively access it and so you can utterly block it out by just not thinking about it.

The notion of the future not being real is the part that really did the trick for me, though, by allowing me to construct appropriate expectations rather than constantly getting my hopes up or feeling as though things wouldn’t work out just the way I would like them to. By remembering that there are infinite futures that could possibly become our present it’s pretty easy to tame your expectations. All I have to work with is the present and while I’ll keep trying to make it as great as I possibly can, it might not work out sometimes.

But then I can just leave it in the past and keep plugging away.

Love is a thing

Truly. It wasn’t what I thought it would be, but here it is all the same and it’s even better than I thought it would be.

Read

Read everything – all of it. Fiction. Non-fiction. I’m usually working through one book of each at any one time. Interact with it – jot notes in the margins, highlight passages you like. Pull the book off the shelf a few years later and review your notes or – better yet – read it again if the mood strikes. The benefits are too many to get into here (don’t worry – I will get into it in the future) but just know that you’ll never regret skipping a third marathon of House of Cards in favor of a little reading.

It’s not even cheating to count this blog post.

Sports are beautiful

A not insignificant amount of my time and attention is devoted to sports, though almost none of that time is dedicated to the actual playing of a sport; I’m mostly a spectator. I think often about how strange it is that myself and thousands of others become emotionally involved in something over which we have virtually no control. Even the outcomes are – in the grand scheme of things – rather meaningless. What reflection does it have on me when one of my teams win? It doesn’t make me a better person any more than a loss makes me less of a person. So why do we care so much?

I found my own personal answer in a rather obscure place (remember when I said lessons come from unexpected places?): the New York Times review of The Great American Novel by Philip Roth. The review ran in 1973 and was written by Thomas R. Edwards, who offered this notion:

For thinking men, non-performers, sports offers a tempting glimpse of grace, of the merging of self into pure and formal function.

For me personally, this hits the nail squarely on the head and adding team-specific context only deepens my connection to my teams. I am a West Virginia University alumnus but my fandom of the university sports teams can be traced back to birth and is wrapped up in my being raised in West Virginia. I further deepened my connection by participating in the marching band during my four years there. My love of the Tampa Bay Rays sprung up when I was living in Orlando and has as much to do for how management runs the team as it has to do with the players on the field (Evan Longoria is a beast!). After moving to Australia I fell in love with rugby league rather quickly and I latched onto the Sydney Roosters just as fast. They were out of contention for a few years but managed to make a run to the premiership last year, which gave me my first true connection to Australia that was all my own.

Sport is a part of my life for at least the reasoning offered by Edwards, but it sticks around for reasons that are a bit more personal and keep the excitement levels high.

Never forget where you come from

Being born and raised in West Virginia is an important part of my identity and character. I’m proud of this heritage because of the things I associate with being a Mountaineer: trustworthiness, honesty, resilience, determination, sacrifice, friendliness and a connection to nature. I left the state at age 22 but my connection to those rolling hills is as strong as ever – even though I now live about as far away from them as I possibly could. I’ll be a Mountaineer until I die.

Montani Semper Liberi

“Mountaineers (are) always free.”

Thanks for reading – see you in my thirties!

Define Yo Self Before You Refine Yo Self

Posted on by Greg

Rupert is defining himself quite literally.

Defining yourself is the critical first step in establishing an ongoing and intentional program of personal development. Even if you consider yourself to be pretty self-aware, a little reflection might yield surprising results. If you fail to take the time to get this definition right you may find yourself swimming against the current in order to get somewhere you don’t actually want to be.

You are complicated. I’m not saying this because I’ve seen your Facebook statuses about your ex, I’m saying it because who among us is so simple? Add external forces to the mix and you’re talking about a cocktail of personality that is rather difficult to reverse-engineer.

But we’re going to try.

Your Inherent Nature (And Nurture) Sets The Scene

If I asked you to define yourself before we go any further, you would probably go straight for your hardwired traits:

  • Intro/Ambi/Extrovert
  • Shy versus outgoing
  • Type A or B personality
  • Creative or technical mind
  • Early riser or night owl

Our brains are all wired differently and I’m sure you can pick one of the options on each of the above lines that describes how the synapses in your own brain fire.

It’s important to understand these inherent elements of our personality because they are essentially permanent and incredibly difficult to overcome. Shy people can learn how to work a room, sure, but while working said room they will be fighting against their very chemistry and creating a cognitive dissonance that might lead to anxiety. Owners of a Type A personality can take a vacation like the rest of us but they may never be able to fully relax on that beach. Creatives have no time for trigonometry, night owls think the ‘sunrise’ is a fairy tale, etc., etc.

Nurture also plays a significant role in the equation. My girl was born and raised in a city while I grew up in a rural area. The characteristics that were ingrained in our personalities as a result of these differing circumstances mean that we sometimes look at the same scenario in very different ways. Single children will have differing worldviews to those who grew up with siblings. Guys who had an older sister will grow up to be quite different than those who had a younger sister. The prism through which you develop your worldview will have a not insignificant impact on your personality. Even if the effect is subtle, it’s there.

By understanding where you stand against all of these measures you can design your own development and steer yourself in the direction of a destination that will please your inner nature (and nurture).

Understand How You Want To Be You

I assume you have goals (you are reading a personal development blog, after all) but there are any number of avenues by which you might pursue those goals. Type A and B personalities again come into play with this concept. Type A are always on the go (hello, mobile readers!) and don’t sit still for too long before getting on with multitasking, while Type B are more laid back and happy to take things one at a time (hello, read-it-later gang!).

This whole Type A/B idea is more of a theory than a hard and fast choosing of sides but it’s a good place to start when considering the manner in which you’d like to move ahead with your personal development. Do you prefer gold stars and rapid achievement or does slow and steady win the race for you?

Context Changes More Than Just The Scenery

However straightforward the core you may be, things get complicated when you consider the different contexts in which we all must operate at different times. When alone in your living room, I imagine it’s pretty easy to be you – but what about when you’re in any of these places:

  • Work
  • School
  • A family dinner
  • A friend’s birthday party
  • On the train

I’m guessing that your behavior would vary across these different contexts. For example, our work self is not the same person that has dinner with our parents. The contexts can get even more specific still; the you that rides the train to work probably doesn’t chant and sing like the you that rides the train to a football game.

If it all seems a bit two-faced (or five-faced, even) I guess that’s because… it is. But in this instance you’re not only allowed to get away with it, society would rather you get away with it. Ever had a boss that engaged in overshare about his sexual exploits? That’s an example of somebody who can’t keep his contextual selves within their appropriate contexts. Don’t be that guy – nobody likes that guy.

There are many behaviors and traits that are appreciated across all contexts (like punctuality and patience), so this is naturally where you want to start. It only makes sense to allocate time to the areas that will yield the greatest harvest. However, once these universal traits have been addressed you can really get to work on maximizing each of your contextual selves. Learning to cook a dish isn’t going to advance your career but it’ll impress the hell out of your parents. Likewise, brushing up on your Excel skills will do wonders for your work self but won’t hold the attention of your girlfriend (spoken from experience).

Sometimes The Context Gets Official

Throughout your life you will encounter – and probably align yourself with – any number of organizations. These could include alumni associations, trade unions, social clubs, fraternities or even mastermind groups.

I’ll dedicate more digital ink to associations and organizations in the future but they’re important to consider now and in the context of you because it is you who actively chooses to join them and the act of forming this association with an organization – whether passively or directly – reflects on you.

Choosing to join Boy Scouts of America, for instance, is a direct, opt-in decision that implies your own values and beliefs align with those of BSA – otherwise you wouldn’t have signed up. Choosing to attend a particular university, on the other hand, is rather passive and suggests value alignment that may not be present. You might have attended a Catholic university because their chemistry program is tops, but people may assume that you’re Catholic (and thereby live by Catholic values) as a result of your decision to attend school there, even if that was never a factor that you considered.

Whether directly or passively, these associations become part of the definition of you.

And Oh, The Things You’ll Do

The wild thing about all of this is that we’ve considered so much of what makes you you and we have only just scraped the surface of the actual things you get up to while being you. All of the activities in which you engage will speak volumes about you (actions speaking louder than words and that). Think about your high school friends who went to work and those who went to college. I’ve biased the result a bit by framing the exercise in this way but that fact – whether they studied or not – is probably a factor in your own impression of those people but all they’ve really done differently to each other is pursue different activities.

Think about car decals. When you see stick figure families on the back of a car, you assume (without knowing anything else about that person!) that they are all about their family. Somebody with “26.2” on their car has run a marathon and – you’d be safe assuming – would include “running” in their own definition of self.

What activities would be included in your own definition of self? What stickers are on your metaphorical back car window?

  • Education?
  • Cooking?
  • Photography?
  • Writing?

Now – what are some activities in which you engage that would not be included in your definition of self?

  • Drinking a liter of soda everyday?
  • Watching three hours of TV every night?
  • Spending (a lot of) company time on Facebook?
  • Eating fast food instead of preparing a fresh meal at home?

Nobody would ever know you were doing these things unless you told them – but you don’t tell them, do you?

And Now We Get Real

You don’t share these naughty activities because you’re not proud of them and you continue to engage in them because nobody is calling you out on being so naughty. It’s exactly the vicious cycle that it appears to be and you probably wouldn’t define yourself by these less desirable activities. Unfortunately, it’s still a part of your definition of self, even if it’s not a public part.

Your definition of self is about what you do more than what you think or say. The self-described “healthy eater” can’t have his cake and eat it, too.

Defining yourself, then, helps you to clarify your priorities and make better decisions for your own development. So here’s your new mental filter: what if everything you do were included in your definition of self.

Thinking of grabbing another soda? You’d have to add it to the definition.

Feel like another House of Cards marathon? Add it.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying you have to drop all soda and TV. I’m merely suggesting that you should consider the outcome of such activities. It’s possible to enjoy our vices without allowing them to define us.

For a long time I had a terrible habit of drinking too much cola. Three cans a day – often more – and virtually no water. I knew this was not healthy and it slowly came to define me. It haunted me. It made me feel bad but I kept drinking cola at the same rate, anyway. And then one day I decided I had had enough of doing what was easy. I wasn’t going to let this habit become part and parcel of my character.

I had to trick myself. I stopped keeping cola in the fridge and didn’t keep any ice on hand, so I had to plan ahead if I wanted one and usually the fact that I couldn’t have a can immediately was enough to make me get a glass of water instead. I got down to one can a day – still not great, but my water intake was up to at least 2 liters a day (the average adult male needs 3 liters a day).

By the time I got to this stage I noticed that I was craving the flavor of the cola again. It had been some time since I had a conscious desire to drink a can rather than just grabbing one because I was thirsty and water was “lame”. So I went a step further and stopped keeping cola in the house. Now I might have two cans over the course of a week – almost always with a meal – and I regularly get my 3 liters of water a day. The cola has gone from my dirty little (not so) secret habit to an occasional treat that I really enjoy when the craving strikes.

The point of this story is that I didn’t cut cola completely – I still get to have one here and there and now it tastes even better when I do – but my cola drinking habit no longer defines me. I’m no longer the guy who drinks too much cola – I’m the guy who is always hydrated.

I would recommend you start framing your own definition of self in this way. Start with “I’m the person who….” and follow that up with “I’m not the person who…” in order to filter out undesirable activities. Use of this positive and negative language will enable greater clarity in your developmental decision-making.

Only by knowing what you presently are (and are not) can you move confidently in the direction of positive and intentional personal development.

Welcome to Toward Vandalia!

Posted on by Greg

IMG_2142 (1024x693)

Welcome to Toward Vandalia, a personal development blog that I hope will empower you to discover your truest self and maximize the potential of that self. The aim of ToVa is not to be an airy-fairy feel-goodery that encourages you to “Reach for your dreams!”. No, the goal here is to offer practical insights and wisdom. I do want you to reach for your dreams, of course, but I’m hoping to help you conceptualize those dreams before developing and implementing a plan of attack based in the realities we all face out in the real world.

What you will not see: a poster featuring a hand reaching for the sunny sky and a caption telling you to “Reach!”

What you will see: advice on engaging in constructive introspection that will indicate where you should reach and practical tips on how to get there one step at a time.

That said, inspiration will feature on the site (on Wednesdays, specifically) but it’s going to be practical inspiration in the vein of real life success stories or lessons to be gleaned from creative works. You’ve probably read stories similar to the ones I will share, but the mission of this site will be to help you bridge that gap between “Man, I wish I had the ability to do that” and showing yourself – by doing it! – that you’ve always had that ability.

Each week is going to have a prevailing theme. The meat is going to appear on Monday and Wednesday, while Friday will feature curated content gathered from around the interwebs that particular week.

Monday is going to set the pace with a longer thought piece and discussion of the theme that week. These themes might be general like “leadership”, but the Monday post will typically have a specific point to make on the topic. Occasionally the topic will be quite specific – such as a specific tool that will help you achieve forward momentum – and I’ll break the article into parts so as to give you the option of reading a brief overview or an in-depth walk-through.

Wednesday will give you a mid-week blast of practical inspiration. Typically this will fall in line with the theme of the week but every now and again something ‘breaking’ might be featured instead.

Friday will close out the week and give you a few pieces to check out over the weekend. Typically these links will be from that week (a “best of” the articles that I found helpful) but I’ll also include “throwback” links when they’re appropriate matches to the theme of the given week.

The Monday posts may sometimes be broken into two and concluded on the Tuesday. Off-topic issues that I feel might interest some segment of the readership (but may not appeal to the whole readership) may occasionally appear, but always on an “off” Tuesday or Thursday.

The goal will always be to get you thinking constructively about yourself and your goals. Whether your ambitions are to tackle and finally complete a pet project (like that novel you’ve been “working on” for the last ten years) or to scale the ladder at your company, ToVa aims to help you along the way.

I hope that you find the content to come both helpful and interesting. If you ever have any comments or suggestions, I urge you to get in touch via the “Contact” link in the main menu. Alternatively, feel free to comment on any given article so that the readership at large can benefit from the ensuing discussion.

Thanks for reading – best of luck out there!

Montani Semper Liberi,
J. Greg Joachim
J. Greg Joachim

You Are The Sole Author Of Your Life Story

Posted on by Greg

How will your life story read?

Every kid has that fantasy career when they’re growing up: firefighter, police officer, movie star, author, etc. For me the dream was to be an astronaut and walk on the moon. Unfortunately, two realities brought me down to Earth (see what I did there?):

  1. I was not interested in acquiring the math and science background that such a career would require.
  2. We don’t fly to the moon anymore so why even bother?

As we mature, most of us abandon those childhood dreams due to similar reality checks. In the process we lose that part of us that could put a cardboard box on our head, call it a space helmet and envision no future in which we are not exploring the lunar landscape. We stop calling ourselves astronauts-in-training and we get on with life. Mortgages can’t be paid with hopes and dreams, after all.

Unfortunately, these self-inflicted limitations that we place on our imagination and self image begin to hold us back from accomplishing the dreams that are in reach.

Say you want to be a writer – what does it take? As near as I can tell, all you have to do is write.

That’s right: the mere act of writing automatically makes you a writer. No MFA required.

Want to be an actor? You don’t need drama school – you just have to act.

Want to play guitar? Strum a guitar and you’re a guitar player.

You see the pattern here. Am I simplifying things? Absolutely. Am I over-simplifying? Not at all.

Read back over the past few sentences. You’ll notice that I didn’t give you one step instructions on how to be F. Scott Fitzgerald, Leonardo DiCaprio or Dave Matthews. All I did was show you what it takes to begin down those particular paths.

One thing you will never encounter is a best-selling author who never wrote a word. I’ve told you how I feel about math and even I can see that this doesn’t add up.

Your experiences between your childhood dreaming and your present reality might make you feel as though it takes a publishing deal to be considered a writer but this is a lie: all it takes to be a writer is to write.

You are the sole author of your life story. If you want there to be any possibility that the story ends with “and all of his albums went platinum” then the next chapter must begin with “He picked up the guitar and began to strum”.

Keep Things In Perspective

Posted on by Greg

Rupert is doing the work. Deadspin recently ran a great piece that was ostensibly about the expense of weddings and the tendency of some couples to lose sight of the only necessary components of a wedding: two people wanting to get married and the person of official authority who can make it legal. In such scenarios – and in everyday life – it can be hard to keep things in perspective. However, the author, Albert Burneko, goes well and truly beyond the wedding example and touches on being practical, tempering expectations and – if one reads between the lines – doing the work.

Life is only as complicated as you make it

The wedding example is a classic – a couple can convene at the courthouse and be Mr. and Mrs. in less than thirty minutes OR many thousands of dollars can be spent on venues, travel, outfits, food, flowers, cake, drinks, favors – the list can go on forever.

That is, it can go as far as you want it to. Burneko’s point is that you should only take that list as far as two considerations will reach:

1) What do you actually want?

2) What can you afford?

To go beyond either limitation is to have lost perspective. To arrange more than you actually want is silly – to arrange more than you can afford is irresponsible. To surpass either limit and then complain about the outcome is a great way to lose friends.

Be ambitious, but temper your expectations

Burneko’s own example of his basketball dreams is too great to not just quote directly:

Sadly, bitter experience and a dawning awareness of the harsh realities of genetics taught young [Burneko] that, at the very least, becoming Penny Hardaway would require many millions of dollars, as well as several still-far-off and probably completely ludicrous advancements in the likely nonexistent scientific field of Replacing Young Boys’ Entire Bodies With Much Larger and More Athletic Bodies for the Fulfillment of Sports Fantasies. This was quite a bummer. 

He knew he would never be Penny Hardaway, but he goes on to make the point that this does not mean he couldn’t (or shouldn’t) play basketball – or that playing the game required anything other than a ball and a hoop.

Just because you can’t have everything doesn’t mean you have failed or that you can’t have anything. To not play basketball because it would not likely lead to NBA stardom is to not be in touch with reality. Ambition is important, but tunnel-vision that limits your potential is a dangerous trap that should be avoided.

So get started

Even though it goes beyond his thesis, my main takeaway from Burneko’s piece was the next logical step to his commentary: do the work. It has long been my ambition to be a novelist and last April I took an important step – the only step neccesary, in fact – toward that goal: I began to write a novel.

The process of writing a novel can also be expensive… if you want it to be. Professional cover design, paid promotion, the opportunity cost of foregone salary if you decide to quit or take leave from your day job.

Or it can be done for essentially nothing. Really, you just need words. Any number over 50,000 will do nicely. Cover designs can be simple (and are hardly an upfront consideration), marketing can be done for free via social media, and there is no opportunity cost (outside of less time for House of Cards) if you commit to writing in your free time.

But what if my ambition is to write the Great American Novel or to be as acclaimed as my own favorite author, F. Scott Fitzgerald? Well, that’s a nice thought and a lofty goal indeed, but I would do well to keep my expectations a little more grounded.

I’m probably not the next Fitzgerald, and that’s OK. It hasn’t stopped me from doing the work. I have my story and when I have my allocated time I flirt with the muse and begin to type. Sometimes I’ll write a sentence or maybe a mere phrase that I convince myself is worth reading – potentially Fitzgerald-esque. I’m probably wrong, but it feels good anyway. If I let the minuscule odds of achieving literary immortality keep me from trying, I wouldn’t have that feeling of accomplishment.

Don’t complicate matters unnecessarily and lose sight of the nuts and bolts.

Don’t forego an activity because there is a chance you won’t be the best.

Set the bar high, but keep your feet on the ground.

Do the work.