How To Get To The Top Of The Life List Or: Why You Should Forget Results And Focus On Your Effort

Christopher Burns

How do we define the best? Rankings, metrics, striving to get ahead?  Life is filled with competition.  What is the best book?  What is the best blog post? What is the best phone to get, the best TV, the best laptop?  

Why does not everyone have the same stuff? Know the same things? Behave in the same way?

Now we can share information so freely, why is not everyone operating on the best way of doing things - just like pushing out an operating system upgrade.  Why do not all humans already do the best thing for themselves?

Firstly, the best is subjective. What is best for me might not be best for you.  

Secondly, there are outside forces not wanting us to be our best - tax law; governments; special interest groups; companies who sell arms, kill animals, stuff humans with sugar.

And thirdly because we are wired to fit in.  We want to do what everyone else does.  Standing out is dangerous. But standing out is what is necessary to be the best you. You will not make it to the top of any list if you do what the majority of people do.

Most people use any "free" time to consume - media, chocolate, fear.  To whittle away their time on purpose - with chores, with a day job, down the pub - rather than living like mortals and using their short time with purpose.  

We try to emulate the results of others without putting in the effort - this is how the middle class was created. To buy the car that they see others driving as a status symbol, not realising that the rich are buying the car using money their money has earned whilst they themselves are doing the opposite - paying for both the car and the interest on the credit they took out to buy it.  Same with their house and their lavish holidays.

If you want the life of your dreams, then you better put in the work rather than dreaming.  Life is a balance of effort and expectation - you can get in balance by raising or lowering each end.

---