An Average Joe. Who Told you That?
As we get older, people tend to discredit our abilities and our potential. Whether it is your parents telling you to get a job like everyone else (the norm) or an employer telling you that you are not any better than your current position,
I see a lot of people offering the oh so feared statement, "I am just an average Joe/Jane."
Say what?
You are average? Why are you average? Is it because enough people told you that you were average over the years (usually to position themselves as more authority) that you started to actually believe them?
What does average even mean? My observation is that it means many things to many people. Your version of average is likely different than mine...which is different from the next person. And can't your 'average' change ? It certainly can.
Whatever the case, I am here to be the contrarian.
You are NOT average. Far from it.
You are unique. You have an unbelievable amount of potential. You have skills that few people have. You have interests that make you unique. You have quirks. You have idiosyncrasies. You are special. You may even be a bit weird.
But one thing that you are is far from average.
It is my understanding and appreciation that ANYONE can achieve success online. I know this because I have worked with all types over the years. I have worked with truck drivers, teachers, doctors, stay at home moms/dads, nurses, construction workers, office clerks, oil patch workers, veterans, the unemployed, the over employed, students...you name it.
This leads me to the question...
What Makes Us Feel Average?
One thing that I have found is that we all have a bit of doubt about our abilities. I do, you probably do.
This is because we have failed over the years and we have been reprimanded for failing. We didn't get a "passing grade" or we didn't get the job, or we didn't win the game...or we didn't give the right answer. Sometimes we get in trouble for failing.
This creates doubt. A doubt that we are not born with, but a doubt that comes with age and that is influenced by our environment. But the 'average' sensation and vacate your body the minute you tell yourself you are NOT average (because you are not).
Failing is good and completely normal. It is part of problem solving. Failure is the fundamental learning block for everyone and everything we achieve. We are problem solvers and it is solving problems that give us purpose in life.
Think about it.
When do you feel as though you have purpose in life? It is when you solve problems in your own life, and in others? That creates a sense of accomplishment, and it leads to a more abstract skill set.
Now it is your time to solve your niche, solve the process of building a business, solve problems in front of you, fail at it before you succeed at it.... and have a heck of a lot of fun doing so.
You are not average. You are incredible. #justsayin
Recent Comments
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Awe Kyle this post is proper Awesome. It's true we get told sometimes we are average Joe's.
This post puts a whole load of things into perspective.
We are not just Average and we are more than that.
I do enjoy everything I do too. I now have a purpose in life, first time in many years. Thank you to You and Carson.
Thank you Kyle a boost we all need at some point in our lives.
Fab Post.
Debs ;)
Great words to live by Kyle!
I was always told by my Grandmother and my Dad that you learn from your mistakes, and boy were mine Goodies! But it's true and I passed it down to my boys, I'm hoping they'll pass it down also.
Just to let you know, not a one of the three is AVERAGE! Not by a long shot.
Laurel
I know I am failing in my attempts at making my site. But I don't want to surrender since two of my sites are already going to a one-year-old maturity.
Traffic not increasing, affiliate programs not gaining, Adsense is stagnant. I'm at a loss.
If I am going to sell my sites I doubt if it can pay back my monthly premium expenses for one year.
I am just giving hope to myself that one day I could find that one step that will start to open the income funnel and I will shout to the world that WA has taught me this.
I've found that sometimes when you get "writer's cramp" or something like it, it's good to back up and start with a clean slate and new eyes.
It's work, but for me it has worked quite a few times.
Also take some time off (it doesn't have to be a lot), relax, let your creative mind wander. You'll find you come back refreshed and everything looks different "in the daylight"!
My best,
Laurel
Thank you Kyle. I feel so much better now. There's this subtle knocking in your head that tells you, try as you might, you just don't have what it takes. So you stop.
Then that entrepreneurial desire reawakens and you tell yourself how foolish you are to try again. But you do.
So since you said I'm incredible, I will keep on trying 'til I make it. (LOL)
You are soooooooooooo right. We are "individual", only "one of us", therefore we are "unique". With a lot of tools and resources in our "bag" of knowledge that we acquire on our path through life. We must be grateful and share this knowledge with those in need.
Great post Kyle.
Thank you.
Very honoured to have a coach like you, Jay, and many others on here.. There is no doubt you have known this stuff for some time and is what helped you make the grade.
This is the mind that brought me into Wealthy Affiliate. At the time I had been delving into the makings of an entrepreneur (and still do) the time was ripe for me to have found a place like this.
School, employment, television, mainstream entertainment, sports - I just couldn't get into any of it.. I was not made for that and back in the mid '70s, began to search - a journey that took me 2000 miles from where I lived. I just could not do the standard stuff and do what everybody else did. Even the music I was listening to was off-beat to the popular...
https://youtu.be/yWc-TdQ2LCU
There is a grass roots element to entrepreneurship. I have always been drawn to unblazen trails. It makes up every fiber of my being and have always refused the heavily travelled ways.
Schools ready students for employment. It's a one-way conveyor that leads to obscurity. Getting involved with the Internet when it started opened the Pandora's Box that has never again been shut.
Everything you described above, I have a single term for it...
Consumerism.
I hate it. I hate being called a consumer, and even the word "sir" has become a retail term.
The best education comes from entrepreneurs willing to teach the inspired.
I greatly appreciate you.
Daniel
Schools are the systemic issue in my opinion with the way people act, and what they accomplish. They are not geared towards people innovating in most cases, they are geared towards teaching within the boundaries that they set.
These create an "average" work force, and average subset of education, and as a result you have an abundance of people out there that are not only thinking they are average, but achieving no more than "average".
Be great at one thing. Solve problems in the space, with consistency. Never take no for an answer. And embrace every single failure in life with the idea that you can conquer it, instead of how can you avoid it.
I do concur. If it is out of the ordinary, radical, off-beat, contrary, and seemingly ridiculous or insane, compulsory education protocol is to discourage it - and with it, creativity that brings about change in existing systems.
The Chocolate Watch Band, The Lemon Pipers, The Deep, Ultimate Spinach, Country Joe & the Fish, Notes from the Underground, The Cellar Dwellars, Sattlesore, and many others - and of course, we can't forget the "regular" stuff like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Cactus, The Velvet Underground, The Fugs, The Zombies, The Headstones, Iron Butterfly, The Zachary Thaks, The Animals, The Pacific Gas & Electric Company, Kasenetz Katz,
Oh, by the way, you might like The Kinks' version of "I'm Not Like Everybody Else. For many years, the CWB version was the only one I knew.
https://youtu.be/mmb7TU0OrOI
These songs have a haunting aire about them from the turbulent times these artists expressed.
There also was a genre of music in the 1960s called "sunshine music." the above "Lemon Pipers" some of their music fit this genre as well as psychedelic. Purely sunshine, the band, The Sunshine Company put out the following song which portrays how adults lose creativity ( but don't have to.) and can learn by observing children.
https://youtu.be/7LpxFAPpH_w
That means a lot to see such an article written by the CEO of the company!That does prove we are special in your eyes, Kyle. With all our doubts and insecurities, and procrastination- it's a totally new sphere for most of us.
Thanks a bunch! You are really special! :))
Vera
People have doubts, they stem from their environment and things that have happened to them in their lives.
But some people approach these events with the mentality that they are going to conquer them, others let these events overtake their lives.
Accomplishment and achievement is the result of progression. Simply work to move the needle forward n terms of your education each and every day, and you are going to achieve.
Education (learning) is act of consistently failing to get the right answer, and evolution or innovation could be thought of in the exact same way. Think about that.
Really like comparing the process of learning where trial, error and success go together with evolution or innovation. A very profound thought.. Thanks again!:)
7 Billion people in the World and all different. No one is the same. There is no real average. A baby is born, then learns to crawl, then walk and talk.
It is only as they get older that they learn from others how to be negative.
As we grow we choose our way of life.
School should be teaching more than the ABC, they should teach how to be positive with the ability to progress for a life of wellbeing.
Thanks for your time, Tom Short.
Agreed. We first learn predominantly from our parents or caregivers, but then as we grow up we learn more and more from our surroundings. Of course this is going to be different for everyone, so what we "think" we are capable of achieving will be based on this.
Limiting beliefs will perpetuate the more the circle around you tells you achievement is not possible. The problem with this mentality is that you will never solve new problems, you won't learn, and you won't evolve. That is the foundation for normal.
Great post , Kyle. An always timely subject.We are indeed surrounded by and bombarded with -negativity constantly. I know I am.......Some is well-meaning (consciously, at least) some......not so innocent. Some downright nefarious. The first step is to recognize it when it rears its head. Not so easy to do sometimes because we just don't believe in it so, we don't hear it but it affects us just the same ........ or we absorb so much of it that we get inured to it; numb to it, and then we buy into what it's selling. Thanks for this...............John T
Yeah, we are all. Everywhere we look. But there is a lot of positivity around all of us as well, it comes down to what we choose to latch onto.
Not to say we can't learn from negativity as well, it helps shapes is, but when it oversteps the ideas that we cannot accomplish things (that are completely achievable), then it becomes a poor influence on our lives.
You are capable of anything John...anything.
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What a prolify read filled with the reality of life. Thank you for bringing it forth. From the very first day when we breath that first breath, we were centered into a world where bullies dwell, and they were waiting to see what young innocent life to destroy. Yes
It all started from home,school then work.
Growing up from infant to adulthood, we all learned to believe what others felt or said about us, many didn't have a way to escape, making it difficult for them to think of themselves in a positive way.
There are many people living in this world like a lost sheep, because no one never told them that they was better that that, or you can do it, or you can be what you want to be in life. So, these people got lost in the shuffle.
Bullies are every where, they are the people who didn't get the benefit of the doubt, yes, they are the ones with very low self-esteem. They are the ones, that, find ways to make other people lives as wrecked as their own.
Kyle, with all of that being said, I am a person within the community not to just make money, but to help those people to make money and to help them to travel their journey knowing that there are good people who believe in them and love them for who and whatever their case maybe.
I really appreciate you for elaborating on a sensitive subject that many people don't talk about but carry the baggage and remain miserable.
I admire your humanism!
Now, "That's My Reality."
Blessings,
Louisa B