Growing Up With/Around Professionals
Growing up around professionals at the top of their class sounds like a dream to most because, for most, a dream is all it will ever be. This fact remains not because any one person is better than the next. Rather, it’s because there are few individuals in this life willing to dedicate their lives to their craft with 100 percent dedication and determination. While most like the end result of screaming fans, admiration, feeling special, and social currency, the challenges it brings (such as the near-impossible days of practice, frustration, failure, uncertainty, getting up at 3:00 AM for all day drives multiple days in a row, having a show every day of the week for a month with very few days off, having to be in peak performance condition every single night as if its your first night as well as the first time performing period, 16–18 hour drives on a bus — in some cases in a van — to get to the next place on time, leaving loved ones for not days or months but years at a time with the uncertainty of not knowing if any of what you’re doing is actually going to pan out for you and your family, working all night into the morning and finding out in the middle of the night that the promoter can’t pay you because they lost money, having to have a consistently positive outlook when every aspect of life from personal to professional is challenged hourly by things going wrong, etc.) are seldom desired.
My experience with above-average (but not professional) people all over the world is that they are much more comfortable doing the things that make them comfortable as opposed to seeking out the things they don’t want to do to be well-rounded and sharp in the areas in which they are weak. Conceptually most people when asked will swear they are on the ladder. Yet their life reflects a contradictory story void of a ladder to any level of success claimed to be the goal. This contradiction can also be seen in the human body. If you ask most people, they will swear they are the most healthy because nothing is wrong. To be fair, they could be right. There may be nothing wrong (yet) but that doesn’t mean their metabolic labs are optimal or even necessarily good.
The assumption that we are doing all we can just because we are doing all we are comfortable doing is not only a common misnomer by most but, in most cases, it is the norm. This baseline behavior does not distinguish between people. This lack of distinction then leads to a lack of competition in the workplace. This lack of competition allows employers to pay little to nothing for the work they need done because there are not many people unwilling (whether consciously or not) to establish a skill that give the employer a competitive advantage as opposed to skills that favor the competitive edge of the individual.
Since the pandemic, things are shifting to where people in general terms are starting to make more of an effort to be distinct. I’m proud to see that. I personally feel that every single person can be distinct. Finding one’s purpose, on the other hand, is near impossible. It’s near impossible because it takes knowing one’s Behavioral RNA while understanding how to use the information to inform and navigate through the many distractions of friendship, family, and ok-paying jobs that lead nowhere but make one feel a sense of safety. In my competitive view, this kind of “safety” is the most dangerous thing one can do in life. It is a path that typically leads nowhere individual.
Being around professionals teaches discipline and work ethic beyond what one likes to do, but rather what one is required to do. There are significant differences in the professional world between passion and preparation. While passion can get a person in the door, preparation sets them up to possibly obtain a copy of the key from the owner for a sense of stability and equity. Most top professionals utilize both.
Do you do anything in your day that you don’t like to do but know is a requirement for your well-being being human?
