I love to gain my inspiration from other peoples' achievements, from climbing out of adversity to a better place using their trials and tribulations as motivation.
I think, though, I only like that because I see how it applies to my own life and how on an almost daily basis I feel I’m climbing out of trials and tribulations of my own.
In a conversation with a young dental student today on Zoom, I found myself apologising for preaching as they modelled their career towards that of the social media influencing dentist.
One of the major positive side effects of almost entirely giving up social media (for me) was that I had no social media idols to aspire to be.
What happened was that I started to compete against myself (as I’d always done in my triathlon life).
The benefit of that scenario, of competing against yourself and trying to be the best version of yourself is that, although they might not be as ‘great’ as those people who are projected on a billboard, they will at least be painfully honest and their cracks and flaws and insufficiencies will be obvious for you to see as you compete against them.
It’s fine to want to be Captain America but it’s probably better to model yourself on someone who lives in this world.
Blog Post Number - 2837