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What If You’re Not Meant to Be Exceptional? The Gift of an Ordinary Life.
When the world tells you to be exceptional, a quiet, content life can feel like defeat — until you realize it’s freedom.
When greatness is the expectation, the ordinary starts to feel like failure.
Today, we embrace the belief that anyone can accomplish anything. We encourage our children to be rock stars, tech billionaires, or even the President. This encapsulates the hope and possibilities of our times. It is an empowering ideology.
However, it can also be dangerous.
Dangerous because, in a world where you are told you can do anything, what happens when you only accomplish… some things? What if your garage band only plays local gigs, you’ve built a million-dollar rather than a billion-dollar company, or you were elected President… of your local school board? When the bar is set at limitless, anything less than out-of-this-world success begins to feel like failure.
What does it mean that if, rather than President of the United States, you are “merely” the president of your local school board?