This may sound harsh, but plenty of people tend to fit this mold. I’d argue achieving the most within the capabilities of your talents is what should be celebrated as success, not the absolute success talked about in the media that 99% of people will not achieve. Time to go into the memory bank and pull out examples of people I’ve met in life who have achieved unusual success; in each of the cases, the person themselves was unusual.

One time when I was just a child, I met a family friend graduating high school. I only met him that one time so I don’t remember much about him. I do remember that there was a certain distinct presence about him, and I recall him being an unusual person who stuck out. He seemed confident, composed, collected. Looking back, for someone at 17 to have that poise, most people never have it in life. Well guess what? The guy in his final senior year in high school ended up scoring a perfect grade in every class he took. Additionally, he ended up scoring a perfect score in each of those final exams taken. He ended up being valedictorian of the school, and it was the first time in quite a few years that this had actually happened at that school. Guess where he ended up in life? In his early 30s making more than half a million per year as a specialized surgeon in the United States. Of course, grades don’t mean everything, but he clearly was an unusual person.

Another person I met, the guy who had an extreme passion for plants, perhaps even addiction. He absolutely loved plants and was obsessed with them. In all his spare time he would spend time growing his parents garden as a child, and did so as an adult in his own yard. The yard which I passed by many times was spectacularly beautiful, with people who passed by taking photos. He is now the owner of a large plant company that is responsible for many of the corporate buildings in my city. Although his grades in school were mediocre, that unusual passion, discipline and work ethic towards plants, you don’t find that in people commonly.

Yet another person, the guy grew up in China at the time, immigrated to Japan alone for university without family. During the high times in Japan, during university, he started a garbage cleaning business for wealthy neighborhoods who wanted more service than the government allotted schedule services. He took advantage of this and rather than find a fancy internship, did this and even started skipping school. He ended up making a plethora of money, investing it in Japan’s real estate, and Japan’s real estate ended up becoming worth more than the entire country of America. Think about that. At the top, he sold everything and made his way to Canada when oil busted and was at $8 per barrel, and bought a bunch of real estate. He had a knack for recognizing an untapped opportunity, as well as recognizing when saturation occurred, and knew when to move on.

Now these may be more exceptions to the rule than the rule itself, given that research seems to indicate that the average person in starting an entrepreneurship venture is most likely to succeed when they do so in their 50s. Or that most people will never achieve anything successful in any pursuit ever. Charlie Munger mentions that it is hard for ordinary people to become great investors. Is he just tricking us into accepting mediocrity, or is he trying to be wise in helping us avoid cataclysmic disaster? Most people by their late 20s or early 30s will have realized that they are unremarkably average and are unlikely to ever achieve anything of significance in life. There is nothing wrong with being average. In fact, it’s actually a blessing once you realize and gain acceptance of yourself. It frees one of the burdens of difficult to achieve expectations, and takes a huge weight off of the shoulders. It prevents taking ridiculous risks, like 10x leverage to get into forex trading, speculative gambling on small cap stocks or on random alt coin cryptos, starting businesses in fields of no skills, interest or experience. These risks look and feel great in the short term, but end up with disastrous long-term results. Sometimes, those results even happen in the short-term. That’s what happened to someone I knew trying to forex trade through African platforms which offered far more leverage than usual. Ending up going broke and now working part time as an administrative assistant due to not having built any skills or work experience in that same timeframe. Someone investing the easy way and doing nothing, for example index investing or buying a house, would be better off than doing any of those things a large majority of the time.

One time when I was younger, I tried skiing to impress a girl. I thought I’d go off a jump and end up triggering attraction, but ended up embarrassing myself with a faceplant. Ok. Oddly I ended up getting her anyway, but then being broken up with 8 months later. Oh well. By attempting to get extraordinary results, this can make us try and do things beyond our capabilities, and ending up far worse off than doing something within our circle of competence.

That is why my medium profile name is “Avg unicorn”, because within the context of the gaussian bell curve, I’m likely to be below average, average, or above average, and consequently, looking for an average unicorn that gets into the $1 billion market cap or a few billions, not the actual next big thing that ends up taking over the world. I’m not entirely sure how that’s going to play out investing in straight up startups. But I figure if I see an investment that is more likely to get 5–20x return on a “predictable” unicorn that already has traction, that’s a decent result too. And putting just a little bit of money into something that could yield a great result, rather than everything, seems like a better strategy to avoid financial ruin. Only 6% of Americans end up being millionaires at any point in life, and the average age in doing so is age 58. Let’s temper our expectations and not try to achieve such outlandish goals in such a short time period.

Then again, ordinary people can achieve better than expected results simply by practising disciplined, boring consistency over a long period of time. People often have a tendency to overestimate what can be achieved within a single year, while simultaneously underestimating the potential accomplishments that can be attained over a period of ten years. There are stories of content creators who are remarkably average, or remarkably even not average at all, and after just a few years, end up with hundreds of thousands or even millions of loyal supporters. It seems to be setting up good systems is better than setting up good goals; as not reaching those goals, those desires, seems to cause constant anxiety and unhappiness. With excessive risk taking in place, blinding the person towards that one thing. Having a good system in place ensures positive progress will likely take place, and focusing on the present journey rather than the end goal seems to be healthier mindset and lead to better outcomes, for the journey is where we live in, not the destination.

Disclaimer

This is not Financial Advice. This article is meant only for educational and perhaps entertainment purposes.