Everyone Is Average — How To Excel At Life
By definition this title doesn’t make sense.
How can everyone be average?
Well, everyone is relatively average.
Yea shush, I click-baited you.
You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with, this includes who you watch on YouTube, TV, Instagram, …
Before you click off, understand that this quote doesn't just mean pick your friends carefully.
This quote is immensely overused and often misunderstood or people don’t understand the full scope of it.
Are you surrounded by people you look up to?
Do you spend most of your time around them?
Don’t lie to yourself, are they genuinely people you’d want to become and do you spend most your time around them?
The answer is most likely a no.
This article is for the person who’s aspirational and wants to succeed in life.
And if you don’t apply this quote you will fail.
What happens if I don’t surround myself with people I look up to?
You’re going to be the tall poppy that stands out.
You’re trying to better yourself, fix your habits.
You’re trying to make it.
You will stand out from your friends.
You will be the tall poppy in a poppy field.
And you will be cut down back to the same height as everyone else.
Held back from bettering yourself.
You are the crab trying to escape the bucket full of crabs.
When crabs are trapped in a bucket, no one can escape because of the crab mentality.
You don’t even have to put a cover on the bucket.
The one who almost succeeds to escape gets held back by all the others.
“If I can’t have it, you can’t have it”
You will stay in that bucket for as long as you’re surrounded with crabs.
Okay now the same explanation without the mumbo jumbo analogies.
People have an image of you, which is a huge simplification of who you truly are.
They only know the 1% of you that you talk about, show them and that they can observe.
So if all of a sudden you don’t fit that image anymore, the image that they’re friends with, they will try and get you back to fit that image.
Because
“That’s who you truly are”
It’s a primal instinct to do so.
It’s jealousy.
They get insecure themselves if they see you succeed knowing that they started off in a similar place as you.
Even if you think you’re safe from this, just look out for it and you’ll find it at some point.
How do I fix my current situation?
You can try and invite them along your journey.
Take them to the gym with you, give them books to read, help them achieve their goals, …
But there is a high likelihood that it won’t work.
So only one real answer remains, and you know it.
Be ruthless.
Cut them off.
Simple answer, hard to implement.
“But uhhh, won’t I be lonely?”
Yup, for a while.
It’s better to be “lonely” for a while than to be surrounded with mediocracy, if you’re trying to succeed.
Retreat, go monk mode for a while.
And come back 10 times better.
Only then, when you’re climbing to that mountain’s top, will you find friends who are doing the same.
This is the fundamental core of male friendships by the way; side by side doing something together.
I timestamped the 5-minute clip talking about this below.
You can’t expect to find friends when you are at the bottom of the mountain not doing anything.
You have to start the climb, most likely, alone.
People pay a ridiculous amount of money to be surrounded by like minded people.
You don’t have to pay for webinars and masterminds.
You can just start the climb alone and you’ll find them during the journey.
