Being Average

When people use the word average to describe somebody or something it tends to be used in a negative way. If you come back from a restaurant and say the food was average everyone you say this to will immediately not go there. This is because with food their expectation is that when they go out to eat that they will be "wow'd" or taken somewhere their taste buds didn't expect. Average just won't cut it.

So how on this green earth did this cross over to our kids ?

Nowadays for some parents if your kid isn't super bright or super stupid you're told or lead to believe that there is something wrong. I'm serious.

Being average is becoming a stigma. But let me tell you - Average people succeed all the time.

Take for example the below list of people you would all know -

Walt Disney - Average student
Henry Ford - Average student
Milton Hershey - Only had a 4th grade education and look at his company Hershey's Chocolate
Mahatma Gandhi - Apparently was thrown out of Medical school because he kept failing.

and who can forget Albert Einstein, who was removed from school because they said he was "slow". It was his mother who insisted that he keep trying different ways of learning.

Why isn't average ok any more ? When did we wake up and say "oops that's not working".

What's worse is parents bragging about how much help their child is getting to stop being average.

I read this (quite lengthy) article forwarded on to me on how to put your child in therapy , so you can see how easy it is to get it wrong just by over doing it.

image courtesy of blog.pwnthesat.com

But I'm still confused as to how average became bad.

I blame the way we look at the world today, we only look at the top and the bottom not the middle. Only the really great and the really bad are of interest. It's this middle where most of us are and maybe it's because of our new found short span of attention that has led us to believe that the middle just isn't interesting any more.

Try this test on yourself - try remembering the last time you were watching a You Tube Video that went for more than 6 minutes and you watched all the way to the end. (By the way, apparently the average You Tube video is 4 mins 12 secs long)

So to all of us averages - I say congratulations on being the majority, I am an average guy. I'm not super smart and I have an average job and I'm actually really happy with that. In fact, I'm actually very happy in general.

And to those aspiring to be above average - I say to you -  stop it you're just making it harder for yourself, and not only that your going to be constantly unhappy looking for it.

So be happy with what you have and more importantly use it to your advantage.

Now if it's ok with you I'm going to make my self an average cup of tea in an average cup and enjoy the rest of the day.