“The most common road to mediocrity is being realistic.” – Will Smith

Ever notice something about realistic people?

… 90% of the time … they’re broke!

Realistic people can’t stand change. Realistic people are usually cynical about change, paradigm shifts, new ideas and anything that clashes with their secure world. Realistic people will snear at you in the beginning … but loose in the end. Realistic people stay stuck in a frame of mind that only exists in usually the past. Realistic people don’t believe they can ever do anything other than what has already been done. Realistic people are mediocre at best.

Who wants to be realistic?

Let me tell you about unrealistic people. The people who make real differences in this world usually aren’t tallying up the odds, and they aren’t coming up with endless reasons why something can’t work. They don’t care what’s realistic. Let me ask you a question, what the hell in this world is realistic? We wake up every day and do things people would have thought were impossible 20-30 years ago. What if you tried to explain the Internet to someone in 1985? You’d probably have been told your brains are fried. Unrealistic things are happening every day. And if you think being realistic is going to create the kind of life you want, you’re sadly mistaken. Even though things are changing so rapidly every day, we still have the time to sit back and decide what is realistic and what’s not. BS! There is no such thing as realistic and there is no such a thing as unrealistic. The only thing that doesn’t change is your belief of what is “suppose” to happen. Only you can change that.

“The 95% of realistic people in this world work for the 5% of unrealistic people.” – Will Smith

The unrealistic people rule the world. Is it realistic to be the chairman of a top Fortune 500 company? Is it realistic to train your whole life to win a gold medal? Is Open Source software outperforming technology giants realistic? It’s scary to think what the world would be like if some of the great inventors of our time would have been realistic people, who payed close attention to the odds against them. We blame this stuff on luck, or someone who had a fluke opportunity. Even success-minded people fall into this trap. But a few of us know this: when you think unrealistically, it opens a new space in your mind that didn’t exist there before, a higher level of thinking. Albert Einstein said that “a problem can’t be solved at the same level of thinking that it was made at.”

Here’s a question to ask yourself: Am I realistic and in what situations am I realistic? Make sure you pay close attention to the answers you give yourself.

Next time someone tells you something is unrealistic, your answer should be … “Compared to what?”

A good belief to instill in yourself is that nothing is impossible if you really want it bad enough and do whatever it takes. Maybe it takes working late and starting early, a sickening work ethic, relentless repetition until it works. Just take someone who has accomplished something, that you would consider, nearly impossible and use them as a role model. What makes your little challenges so hard to defeat? Are you even giving 10% of what you could?