Our Monsters
Sorry to inform you, but indeed there is a monster under your bed after all.
This monster can sometimes be made of boredom, sometimes of fear. Sometimes it is hiding under your bed just to spare you some frustrations, but most of the time it pops out as a big mass of mediocrity.
Yes. Mediocrity haunt us.
The monster of boredom
Boredom is that humongous and flaccid monster that invades all the space around you without you even noticing it.
He is the motivation killer who was born from that sense of routine and useless efforts.
We realize he’s there when “good enough” becomes a standard in our work, and we feel we don’t have the control or the power to motivate ourselves or those around us.
We lose interest in what is going on around us and we begin to do our work in a mechanical way, without passion or proper attention. Our creativity gauge is set to “drowsy”.
Oh, we do it right. We do it “well enough” and, after all, we’re doing our work as most of the people around us do. So, why bother? Especially if we know that being ordinary wasn't a constraint to rise the salary of one of our colleagues.
And this spiral of boredom goes deeper, until the day when we realize that our work is less than ordinary and that we miss the good old passion we had for it.
But, then, how can we fight this monster? Well, we must kick his ass by getting inspired by people that we really admire. We must see what they’re doing, follow what they’re saying. Let their experience and knowledge motivate us, shake us good so to wake us up from that long sleep of boredom.
To admire someone or something is to get inspired, and inspiration is a special ingredient in fighting mediocrity.
Remember Peter Tosh: ...I got to pick myself up, dust myself off, start all over...
The monster of fear
Fear is gray and thin and cold. It climbs up our spine and get stuck in our brains if we let it.
The monster of fear can surely paralyze us, but sometimes it just disguises itself as “common sense caution”, and gives us a fake impression of control by forcing us to hide ourselves in our “comfort zone”.
Feeling warm and ease inside our comfort zone may seem a fair enough deal with the monster: nothing unpredictable will shake the basis of our work. We work with the same tools, same technologies, same knowledge base. Our work is what it is and we control every bit of it.
I don’t know about you, but for me this situation is getting pretty much close to boredom... I mean, how creative and bold can our work be if we indulge in navel gazing?
To close ourselves in our comfort zones is to close our eyes to evolution, and when we don’t evolve, we die in a deep sea of mediocrity.
So let’s leave our comfort zones and face our fears of failing, of doing wrong, of saying silly things, because we will do all that, and that’s what will push us to get better, to grow as professionals and as human beings. Daring is an exciting part of being creative and fighting mediocrity!
Life isn't a rehearsal… take risks while you have the stage.