Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

Not everyone values growth. Many people are fine with the status quo and that’s okay. However, if you’re a person who despises the status quo like me, then this is for you.

If you want to test the limits on how far you can push the status quo, there is only one way to know for sure you are doing this. FAILURE!

If you think like me, then you see the status quo as a place for average people and average organizations. These average people and average organizations treat failure as a bad word and avoid it at all cost. As a result, the status quo becomes their happy place. No risk, no change, no challenges. As long as they can do the bare minimum to survive everything will be ok in their world.

On the other hand, when you despise the status quo you treat growth as if it is gold and you treat failure as part of the process. This is no easy life. Approaching the world with this mindset is uncomfortable. As a result, there are many days in which you wake up uncomfortable and go to bed uncomfortable. Even though you accept failure as part of the process you still hate to fail.

Even people like us who embrace failure by pushing ourselves past our perceived limits, still hate to lose. But hating failure and hating to lose is not the same as accepting failure and accepting a loss.

Just because you accept failure as part of the process does not mean you accept failure. It just means you accept that winning all the time is not good for you. When you despise the status quo, you understand that if you always win, then you’re not challenging the status quo. What’s more, if you’re not challenging the status quo you’re not testing your limits and you’re not growing.

This is a hard life to live, but the journey is worth it. The fact is history proves that the status quo will always keep changing. Things grow and they die, that’s it. Stagnation is a myth. Once you accept this, you realize life is better for those who are the catalyst of change than for those who sit around waiting to die.