How To Escape Being Average in 2024 (And Live A life Most People Can Only Dream of)

“What we settle for, we get”

Image credit-Midjourney/PrincessPrompt (Otto, The Simpsons TV show bus driver)

Calling people “average” sounds like rich white guy privilege.

It can be offensive as hell. But when I talk about not being average, I don’t say it to gaslight people or pretend I’m superior to anyone…because I’m not.

Escaping average is a must for these reasons:

• Average people get paid the worst

• Average people find it hard to stand out

• Average people have the most competition

• Average people don’t live up to their potential

• Average people build someone else’s dream instead of theirs

• Average people rarely become the best in the world at anything

This is the nightmare I lived until a few years ago. It caused enormous depression that required years of therapy to resolve. It created huge regrets for me because I knew I could do and be more. But I was just full of fear (and beer).

You don’t need more intelligence to be extraordinary instead of average.

It’s paradoxically hard to be successful and hard to be a failure. So you may as well choose the path with the best results because the heartache and pain is the same.

The trend of the last few years is to worship average people

That’s right. Being average has become cool!

Ryan Holiday nails it with this thought:

This backlash against “elites” is so preposterously dumb…and I say that as a proud college dropout. Everyone and everything I admire is elite. 

The way Stephen Curry shoots. The way Robert Caro writes. What a Navy SEAL can do. This idea that we should celebrate average people and their average opinions about things is well…how you make everything worse than average.

The “average” trend isn’t your friend. A few dumb-dumb social media influencers promoted this average trend to get ‘likes’ for saying this sh*t and to spread pessimism.

Don’t get fooled.

Our job in life is to make the world slightly better than we found it. That’s done through the pursuit of excellence, not being a lazy mofo who worships average and sits on the couch watching back-to-back seasons of Game of Thrones in their g-string.

The world is better when you become 1% better every day.

"Why chase winning? Because the only thing that's guaranteed in life if you don't chase it is losing." – Coach Lewis Caralla

Here’s how to escape the curse of being average in 2024.

1. Average IQ people have a huge advantage over smart people

Seems counter-intuitive, right?

People who are smart (or even geniuses) never escape the average results normal people get because they overanalyze everything. They’re obsessed with overthinking, so they never take the basic actions that lead to an extraordinary life.

I remember a consultant I came across in banking. He had three master's degrees from Harvard and had even written a thesis about the state of finance. One time, my boss was going through our team’s expenses, and the cost of his consulting came up.

He got paid less than a first-year graduate.

More brains often equals less money. High IQ becomes a barrier for execution that creates real insights the memorization of information can never deliver.

Overanalyzing everything also leads to a lack of risk-taking.

Without risk you can never have success. You have to know what doesn’t work before finding out what does. And only action can deliver that wisdom.

ROI isn’t a linear graph.

No one can predict what path will help you escape mediocrity. But what I can say is if you get stuck in trying to outsmart everyone with overthinking and analysis, you’ll be collecting a first-year graduate salary.

People pay you for results, not qualifications or letters after your name. Once you understand this average IQ framework it’s easier to get ahead.

2. Stop craving hidden certainty

Average people are drowning in certainty.

They don’t take small risks that could save their life because they want to be certain of the results in a world driven by a state of disorder and consistent chaos.

Society is built on certainty.

Predictable paychecks, generic college curriculum, fact-checking, and career paths that exploit our human nature. Career paths should never be off the shelf.

Certainty leads to comfort, and once you’re relaxed, you’ll find it harder and harder to seek out the discomfort that leads to growth. Over time this certainty breeds a lack of creativity and imagination. This leads to boredom. That leads to feeling lost.

In this unsexy state of mind, you wake up exhausted, drink coffee to try and bounce back, consume sugar to spike energy levels, go to bed tired, sleep poorly, then wake up the next day feeling like crap. This is a vicious cycle.

I once heard a guru say he ate a low-inflammation diet, and it made him 8 figures. On the outside this sounds like hyperbole. If you break it down, what he’s saying is healthy food gave him high energy that allowed him to be more productive.

Energy = Results

Results = Money

Money = Freedom

Freedom is how you go from average to extraordinary and live a life most people dream of.

Statistically speaking, a “normal person” is physically unhealthy, emotionally anxious/depressed, socially lonely, and financially in debt.

F*ck being normal.

– Mark Manson

3. Program your mind, or society will do it for you

“There is no normal, Evelyn.

A 'normal person' is what is left after society has squeezed out all unconventional opinions and aspirations out of a human being.” – Sylvia Path

Society wants you normal because it’s easier to slot you into the economic machine as a newly minted cog. This isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s just reality.

The fastest way to fight against average is to program your mind through books, podcasts, social media, and live events. I call this your content diet.

• Seek out unconventional opinions.

• Be led by non-famous people.

• Follow people you disagree with.

That last one is demonstrated perfectly by this Substack. Every few weeks, I do a write-up on a polarizing figure I don’t like. Without exception there isn’t a person in history I disagree with who doesn’t make at least one good point.

The media programmed me to hate Elon Musk, but when I did my own research, I realized they have a huge incentive to bury him alive because Twitter is making the giants like Fox News irrelevant.

Once you see hidden incentives, you can’t unsee them. And that makes you harder to manipulate and program.

4. Break the rules with a smile on your face

Creativity is a rebellion against following the rules.

Music producer Rick Rubin says in his book:

“Rules direct us to average behaviors. If we're aiming to create works that are exceptional, most rules don't apply. Average is nothing to aspire to.

The goal is not to fit in. If anything, it's to amplify the differences, what doesn't fit, the special characteristics unique to how you see the world.”

Nothing new is produced when you follow the rules. All you get is copycat work that’s low value and keeps you stuck on a hamster wheel to nowhere land.

Rules also produce this type of world, according to Naval Ravikant:

“The modern world is managed by bureaucracies staffed with average people. Bureaucrats pile on rule after rule to keep the below-average from hurting themselves or others. Smart & capable individuals need to either opt out of society or win big before the system suffocates them.”

You either escape mediocrity or, by default, become part of the bureaucracy. When I worked in banking I became a kind of bureaucrat. A politician, even.

My real job was to maintain the status quo. To stifle innovation and not lend money to entrepreneurs with big dreams. Unless a businessperson had real estate to give the bank as security, they were kindly walked out of the office.

Most rules exist to help normies stay the same. Rules are how the nanny police stop average people from hurting themselves from the various paper cuts life delivers.

You’re assumed to be stupid unless you escape average and demonstrate otherwise.

As I write this, I’m watching my one year old daughter play in a blow-up pool. Around the entire outside of the pool are warning labels. At first count there are more than 20.

Holy crap. If society doesn’t trust you with a blow-up pool for kids, what does that say about mediocrity? A lot. If you don’t chase being extraordinary, by default you become one of the adult babies that needs their hand held to work each morning.

This is the definition of hell.

Solution

Break the rules. Question the rules. Redefine the rules like Uber and Airbnb did. Just don’t follow the rules to a tee like a sheep.

5. See busyness for what it is

Being #busy is how they keep you trapped. Read that again.

Runner Scott Mayer describes how it’s secretly done:

In this world, this reality, there’s no time for questions. No time for dreams. No time to consider whether the default path is the best path for you. 

There’s only time for obedience and compliance and adherence to the default path. This is how you get ahead. This is how you matter. This is how you fit in.

By keeping you busy at a job and stuck following bureaucratic rules that are enough to make you go mad, there’s no time left.

Every full-time job I’ve ever worked started with 8 hours a day, 9-5. But as soon as I got past the probation period, my bosses always kept loading on more hours until I was running in circles like a crazy person, AND working weekends.

If you ever find yourself saying “I’m busy,” what you’re really saying is you’ve fallen into one of the greatest traps of the 21st century.

It’s only by escaping “busy” that you have a chance. Read that ten times.

So start saying no to stupid meetings. Get stuff out of your calendar. Switch to an easier job with fewer hours, even if it means you take a minor pay cut.

Because without free time, you don’t have time to think freely.

Without free time, there’s no time to see new solutions and opportunities that’ll help you escape being average forever.

When you don’t act like the normal person, normal people will criticize. That’s okay. It means you’re doing it right – Steve Adcock

6. Use fear or it will use and abuse you

When people online get mad at me for trying to get them to change, what they’re really saying is “I’m afraid ya big-eared mofo.”

I get it. I was afraid too. Fear pushed me into a dark place. That led to becoming an alcoholic. And hanging around people who smoked crack cocaine.

I was always one puff away from becoming a crack addict. And I nearly took a god-damn puff!!! It’s only by sheer luck that I didn’t.

Fear is energy. It’s free motivation that destroys mental ma$turbation. You’re not supposed to avoid it, you’re meant to use it. The reason why we don’t use it is because our friends and family secretly sabotage us, according to Rich Dad, Poor Dad author.

"The fear of being different prevents most people from seeking new ways to solve their problems.

Don’t fear being different. Fear being normal and living a life full of unnecessary struggle and pain that’ll hurt the people you love over time.

There’s nothing better than making your parents proud.

Never apologize for being weird in a world full of normal – Zach Pogrob

Alex Hormozi says average people “fear rejection more than mediocrity.” Getting rejected ain’t so bad though. It toughens you up. It forces you to change.

Rejection isn’t forever. Rejection is redirection.

7. “What we settle for, we get”

(@SchrodingrsBrat)

To escape being average you must be unreasonable enough to believe you can be great.

I’ve always thought I was average. Then I attended a few Tony Robbins events and realized I was settling. I had lowered my expectations and adopted stupid beliefs about what was possible.

When I got around people in a mastermind who had higher expectations, mine naturally rose to meet them at their level (without any extra effort).

It’s easy to settle. It’s easy to give up.

Become intentional and set the bar above what feels like reality. Then you’ll flip the game in your favor.

8. Push 1% beyond what others will do

It’s easy to read this article and think you’ve gotta be freaking Richard Branson and fly a spaceship to Saturn to be happy.

Entrepreneur Codie Sanchez taught me this:

Most people do the bare minimum. Go just one step further and you're in the top 1%.

Just a little bit more effort gets you ahead. 1% increases compound over time to produce results that look unusual (maybe even impossible).

It’s the 1% better mindset.

I’m not the best writer, but I’m about to hit 10 years of writing daily. Over those 10 years I’ve just got slightly better each day. A tiny change here. A tiny experiment there. One new writer friend here. One new subscriber there.

It’s easy to become obsessed with the next 30 days and forget about what you can do in the next 10 years.

Focus on being 1% better. It’s a mental model that’ll feel achievable. And like me, you’ll probably find on most days you beat the 1% threshold. Amazing.

It's not hard to stand out in a world that has normalized mediocrity – Dan Koe

9. There is no such thing as a loss

When I had $1.2M stolen from me in a day, I woke up the next day unemotional.

I got on a call with my business partner Todd and we got right back to work as if nothing happened.

A few weeks later he said “Man, I don’t know how you do that. Like you just lost over a million dollars and it’s as if nothing happened. Most people would jump in front of a bus or take a year off. Are you even human? WTF.”

Todd had a right to be worried about me.

The only reason I have this way of being is because I’ve lost so many times, it’s my version of normal.

Twitter guy Lawrence King says “The most successful people can take five massive losses in a row and still show up the next day like nothing happened. Average people will quit before the first loss even happens because of the fear of that first loss.”

Some quit because they lose. Others keep going because they know you have to lose to eventually find the strategy that helps you win.

Now, I’m not suggesting you gamble your life savings and lose everything to become successful. What I’m saying is you must hardcode into your brain that losses are normal. You don’t quit when a loss happens. No. You make a comeback.

What you’re reading right now is the continuation of my comeback. I found this idea out by accident. But you don’t have to.

Lose more to eventually win big.

10. Develop a sense of urgency

The average person is slower than a snail.

They walk slowly with their head down, looking at their phone. They think slow. They make slow, indecisive decisions. As one Twitter Bro put it, “They lollygag around life.”

They have low energy and little joy for life.

They never make anything happen because there’s zero sense of urgency. There’s always tomorrow, or worse – SOMEDAY (mayday, mayday).

All that’s left is to work for the man on a peanut salary and finish work at 5 PM, then cram onto public transport with the other sardines. Eventually, you’ll do what I did and do the bare minimum to get paid every week and not get fired.

If layoffs strike, you’ll work a little bit harder. Then if you avoid getting fired, you’ll be right back to doing the comfortable bare minimum until the next recession.

There’s a simple solution to the norm of slow: go faster. If you’re told it takes 10 years to become a manager, find a way to do it in a year. If your startup dream typically takes 10 years, find investors and make it happen in one.

Technology and AI are speeding the world up. If you go slow you’ll get left behind.

Start with 1% faster. Then speed up from there.

Big Final Thought

This thought from Mark Manson will put everything into perspective.

Sorry to interrupt your scrolling but this is just a friendly reminder that your time on this earth is extremely limited and everyone you love is going to die one day so maybe you should put the f*cking phone away and go do something meaningful.

There’s no time for bullsh*t. You’re going to die. Live like it. Remove the limiting valve on your consciousness and go out there and make sh*t happen.

And for god sake, put the freaking phone away and wake up.

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