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Let’s not settle for average when you are capable of greatness

Ever had a weak handshake? Ughh…you’d remember if you ever had. Someone once gave one to me as a practical joke and I cannot wash the feeling away. It still haunts me to this day. You should try it some time.

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See we don’t often stop to think about the words we use too frequently do we but if you do ever stop and think about it, ‘average’ is such a nothing expression isn’t it. Like the sort of word equivalent of a weak handshake. ‘Greatness’ on the other hand…greatness is a word that you cannot say without standing that bit taller. Greatness has a stature about it. Greatness, ahhhh….

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Average fantasies

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Can we all admit that none of us get excited and fantasise about being average at something? We don’t grow up and say, ‘you know what? When I grow up I’m going to be an average pilot’. Or ‘I’m going to be a bog-standard hockey coach’. Or ‘I intend to be a very average high-school teacher’. It’s just not in our vocabulary or in our minds when we are small. Yet as we grow up and hit those teenage years, it’s sort of expected of us. Many of us expect ourselves to be…average. Average at whatever it is we choose to do. Oh we don’t verbalise it, but we certainly believe it.

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Now, let’s acknowledge together that statistically most of us are not child-geniuses or even adult ones neither. In fact most of us probably feel a bit ‘average’ when it comes to most things in life. Granted we all have some things that we are just not gifted in. And unless these weaknesses form a fundamental part of life (e.g. building strong relationships with others or handling finances) then we can probably get by without spending too much time trying to improve in these areas of general weakness. But we need to know that we – and the students under our care – are able to move from average unto greatness in certain areas of their lives for sure. All of them. Bar none. We are all capable of greatness.

Friends Having Coffee

Applauding the beginning

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As professionals we often find that encouraging students to start something is the tricky part and once they actually start we stand back and applaud their efforts. Now to avoid any confusion here, we 100% should encourage and applaud and recognise how difficult it is to start something for sure. But let’s not allow them to settle for being average when they could one day become great. I mean think about it, we are surrounded by greatness most of us every day of our lives. Many of us use cars and buses and maybe even planes to get around. We congregate in places with central heating and/or air conditioning. We use modern phones and computers for socialising, research and work purposes. The world we live in is an awesome place, full of greatness. We are literally surrounded by greatness, created by great people who look just like me and you. Great technology, great design, great architecture, great inventions, great fashion, great art. We get to choose whether we settle for average in this vast world of greatness or whether we dive deep and aim for greatness ourselves.

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Finding your lane​

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Helping your students to find their lane in life is important. Most of us cannot enter greatness in more than a small handful of areas in life. But it’s important that once we do align our passions with our vocation and desires that we do encourage ourselves and the students in our schools to go for more. To be more effective. To achieve more. To aim for greatness. After all, starting is difficult and we need to applaud and acknowledge that. But let’s not settle there. Let’s not pitch our tent in ‘mediocre’. Let’s not applaud the beginning too hard that we forget to progress. Let’s not settle for average when we are capable of greatness. And let’s not let our young people fall into that trap neither as they were made for more.

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