We all need things to aspire towards and people to look up to, but too often we see those we people we long to emulate in a jaded lens.
By now it’s no secret I’m a huge advocate of setting and following through with goals. Goals to accomplish specific tasks and creating baby steps that helps us get there. And many times with these goals we pick up heroes that inspire us to do great work. This can be a good thing to help motivate us if we stay grounded or it can be an obsession that we continually let beat us down.
We pick heroes because we want to accomplish what they’ve accomplished or stand for what they stand for. The dangerous part is not picking heroes and looking up to them, that is a good motivator to get better and I’m all for pushing ourselves. The danger comes when we directly compare our work to that of our heroes.
I have some literary heroes of my own such as Tim Ferriss and Seth Godin whose books have helped inspire me to begin writing. I stumbled upon both of these writers in the past 2 years and have since read many of their books and blog posts. Great inspiration for me to get started on this, however I found myself comparing my first few blog posts to their current work. I found that I was beating myself up because my work was not on the level of theirs. They were more concise, I was more wordy. They were more entertaining, I was straight to the point. They had thousands of readers, I had 2….
I got down on myself for about a day until I realized I was comparing my early posts to a lifetime of work from these two giants. Tim published The Four Hour Work Week in 2007 and was working on it for years prior to that. Seth Godin has been blogging every single day for over 10 years now and has published 17 books. And I was directly comparing myself to their works from today! That’s the equivalent of comparing Peyton Manning to a middle Quarterback that played in one game. And I got down on myself for a time until I realized I am just beginning my journey and these men are in the prime of theirs.
We cannot compare our entry-level work to that of a CEO. Instead we have to compare our current work with our work from yesterday. If we spend our time comparing our own current work with yesterday’s work, we know whether or not we’ve improved (and daily improvement is the key). If we spend our time comparing our work to our heroes work, we’ll fall short every time.
We can’t get better if we’re constantly falling short, we need confidence to grow and be bold. So will today be better than yesterday?
Tell me why, and I’d love to hear who your heroes are as well, I’m always looking for new case studies.
