The worst place you can find yourself in life is mediocrity.
For obvious reasons you want to excel. However, failing miserably is also a preferable place.
All humans are born with a unique combination of talents and a key part to the game of life is to uncover them as fast as we can.
School fails us miserably in a variety of ways, however one of prominence is how it subconsciously ingrains in us that life is a staircase. That each year you'll get older, and every year you'll improve and 'upgrade' to whatever the next level is. However, in the real world, the escalator stops.
Rather than see life as stairs, a series of circles is more apt. The circles are created by trying and failing. When we try something that we excel at the circle trends up, when we fail, it trends back down. Naturally, we want to trend up, so the game of life is to find what we excel at.
It's for this reason that being mediocre is worse than failing. Too often when we are mediocre we continue struggling away. Not poor enough to quit, not great enough to excel quickly. You grow stagnate.
"How can you be great the first time you trying something?" you ask.
Of course, by default in these situations you begin mediocre. The key is to then monitor your curiosity. Specifically your energy and engagement levels.
To identify your engagement levels become conscious when you are excited, focused or enjoying a task. Give it a score out of 10. The peak of engagement is flow. The trough is bored.
To monitor your energy levels, become aware of which activities are giving you energy and which ones are draining it. More specifically, monitor the tasks you feel highly energised by not just during but afterwards and which leave you feeling tired.
The two don't go hand in hand. It's possible to be highly engaged, but feel the activity is exhausting, at its conclusion you don't feel fulfilled by the exertion, rather only tired.
Use these measurements as signals.
Run a test with yourself over the next few days. If you find yourself in a role for an extended period of time and no longer rating it highly on either of the scales then it's a sign you're growing stagnate. That the circles have levelled off.
If you're just starting out, use these two levels as a guide of how you will progress. If you rank an activity highly on both you've found something that is play for you and work for others. That's a sign your circles will continue to trend up quickly.
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