January 25, 2012

Crown of laurels or crowning morals?

I'd like to keep this blog personal. I do like to write the occasional essay on a topic that I feel strongly about but feel it's also very important to provide a little bit of a window into who I am for those who are interested.

One thing about me is that I have very high expectations of myself and might be self-confident to a fault (or maybe not, that's debatable). Given those facts, I'd like to do a little bit of an informal self-analysis to discuss the pros and cons of such beliefs.

High expectations will be first up. Some will argue that having high expectations can be dangerous since it sets you up for disappointment more easily if things do not go the way you want them to. That seems fairly logical and I do agree with that. Others say that you should have high expectations if you want to accomplish great things. That makes a lot of sense to me too seeing as if you set the bar low you'll only aspire to mediocre things. So which is better and why? Well, as you've no doubt guessed, I've already decided that high expectations are better. I want to be a big hitter in life. It kind of reminds me of that saying, "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." I think there's a lot of wisdom in that quote. Besides, even though it does set me up for disappointment, I'd rather have the opportunity to do something amazing down the road. In order to swim you've got to be okay to sink.

How self-confident am I really? Does it interfere with my humility? Oh yes, I'm sure it does at times. But to be honest, I'm usually pretty humble. I know how lucky I am to have a lot of the things that I have and try to maintain realistic views. But I'm dodging the main question a little bit. I'm extremely self-confident - even in failure. In my view, I'm bound to fail because that's how life works. I think that if I'm able to maintain self-confidence I'll have a greater probability of succeeding again down the road. So, is this ever a bad thing, really? Not really. Not if it stays in the realm of self-confidence and doesn't evolve into cockiness. At that point, I would be characterized by believing that I have a rite of passage to do whatever the hell I wanted just because of who I am. That would not be good.

Better not to rest on a crown of laurels.

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