When Mediocrity Masquerades as Stability

I opened Leading With A Clear Purpose by sharing how a conversation with a lifelong friend gave me an acute understanding for how even the toughest among us can feel empty or burned out when the work they’re doing no longer provides them with fulfillment. In telling that story, I mentioned how he and I traded punches one evening after getting off the school bus, and that initiating what’s become one of the most longstanding and meaningful friendships I’ve ever had. Looking back now on our scuffle, I can definitely see how it served as a seed to much greater benefit. At the time, all I knew was that it left me with a sore head.

I wasn’t necessarily a bad kid; I didn’t get into a lot of trouble, but I certainly had what many would call a mischievous streak. Today, I know much of that was tied to my highly DRIVEN behavioral style; I love a challenge and get bored easily. If life isn’t moving fast enough and I’m not calling as many shots as I possibly can, I’m looking for something else to get into. As a teenager in a small town, that indeed resulted in more than a little mischief.

I earned great grades through elementary school and middle school. Even my first two years of high school were solid. I’ve never considered myself as overly intelligent, but I also never had to really apply myself to maintain those grades - which usually resulted in me not feeling challenged and having more time on my hands than many of my peers who had to study harder to keep up. As the saying goes, idle time can quickly become the devil’s playground… 

I remember the first time a childhood friend and I found a six pack of beer hidden in a small creek near his house, I was maybe eleven or twelve. We claimed it as our own - because we knew we weren’t supposed to have it - and relocated it to an old shed behind his house. Unlike the first cold sips we had after retrieving it from the creek, it was warm from there on and nothing short of nasty; Nothing I had any desire to try again, at least for a while.

Around fourteen or so, about the same time I picked up my first regular summer job, I began hanging out with a few of the older kids in the neighborhood. Video games were just catching on in those days, but we were more interested in doing anything we could outside. And the various activities we engaged in often involved tobacco and beer. I didn’t really like either at first, but peer pressure is a real thing. Even if there’s no direct push, we all want to belong (just ask Maslow). In those days, though, choking down two or three beers was a free ticket to stumbling around, and four or more almost guaranteed getting sick. Throw a dip of snuff in the mix and throwing up happened much sooner.

As over-the-line as that was for kids our age, we managed to keep ourselves out of any significant trouble - largely by staying off the radar of the adults who would have introduced their feet to our asses. And through the first few years of that, I maintained good grades and reasonable engagement in school. Looking back, that was absolutely mediocrity masquerading as stability, the illusion that everything was fine. In 2011, THe Napoleon Hill Foundation released a book Hill wrote years prior called Outwitting the Devil, which included a chapter called “Drifting with the Devil.” I didn’t realize it as a young teenager, but drifting is incredibly dangerous.  Bad situations don’t always announce themselves loudly; spotting the illusion of stability early allows us to extract seeds of greater benefit before things worsen - if we look for them. I was not doing that then.

We’ll look at how bad daily choices, even when no single choice is inherently awful, court disaster next. Until then, I’ll challenge you to reflect on a current “fine” area in your life or work and jot down one way it might be masking a bad situation. Then identify one small step you can take right away to address it.