Most people spend their entire lives following the crowd, never questioning, never creating, never truly living. What if success isn’t what we’ve been taught?
I have an audio recording from the 1950s by Earl Nightingale called the ‘Strangest Secret.’ Earl defines success as doing something you enjoy which is fulfilling, or working towards doing something you will enjoy doing. He goes on to say that we live in a land of opportunity but 95% of people follow the crowd rather than using the 50 years they have after leaving school to create something for themselves.
Society is geared up for mediocrity. Little creative people are sent to school at the age of 4½ and placed in an environment that was first designed by the Victorians to prepare workers for a factory environment. Mass production and division of labour meant that workers were measured on doing one task in as short a time as possible. The rise of car automation in the 1930s reduced the need for crafts people and they were placed in engineering departments. Silos of experts formed in marketing, sales, engineering and finance but hierarchy was the order of the day, young men who were of high intelligence quotient, based on Maths and English went on to climb the ladder in their chosen field or speciality with the promise of promotion and a gold watch at the end of their career, whilst the non-academics were placed in trades or became factory workers. Women were not involved in this process until the 1970s.
Earl uses a metaphor to describe how organisations were run. He said during the second world war that convoys of merchant ships had to keep together to avoid being destroyed by U boats and that their pace was dictated by the slowest ship in the convoy.
Fast forward to the present day and the author of Positive Leadership, Kim Cameron, suggests instead, ‘for the most part, organisations are designed to foster stability, steadiness and predictability, that is to remain in the middle of the continuum.’ This played out in the UK with most organisations having Total Quality Management in the 1990s and then Six Sigma and Lean in the 2000’s.
So, my question to you today is do you want to be in the middle, one of the crowd in a safe job but not fulfilling your values? (We call them ‘Norms’ in my book ‘Become a Great Leader and Coach using NLP’)
Or do you want to follow your heart’s desire and create something with your remaining years that is a bit special?
If you are ready to break free from the crowd and create something special our NLP and Coaching courses can help you unlock your potential and design the fulfilling life you deserve.
Don’t settle for average. Take the first step today.