How to Be Better Than 99% of People

So, there's this guy, a world-renowned

billionaire, a tech genius, inventor,

and entrepreneur. He's athletic and

talented and handsome with a jaw so

chiseled it looks like Zeus came down

from Olympus and carved the [ __ ]

himself. This guy's got a small fleet of

sports cars, a few yachts, and when he's

not giving millions of dollars to

charities, he's changing out supermodel

girlfriends like other people change

their socks. This guy's smile can melt

the whole room. His charm is so thick

you could swim in it. Half of his

friends were Times man of the year and

the other half don't care cuz they could

just buy Time magazine if they wanted

to. This man, you guessed it, his name

is Bruce Wayne, also known as Batman.

And well, he's a comic book character.

>> I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of

issues.

Now, it's an interesting facet of human

nature that we seem to have this need to

come up with these sort of fictional

heroes that embody perfection and

everything that we dream of and admire.

Medieval Europe had gallant knights

fighting off dragons. Ancient Rome and

Greece had their myths about heroes who

won wars single-handedly and in some

cases fought against the gods. Every

other human culture is replete with such

fantastical tales of utter perfection

embodied in one human. And today we have

our comic book superheroes.

Take Superman. I mean, the guy is

basically a god in a pair of red

speedos. He is indestructible and

unbeatable. And the only thing as sturdy

as his physical fortitude is his moral

fortitude. In Superman's world, justice

is always black and white. And Superman

never waver from doing what's right, no

matter what.

>> People were going to die, die, die.

>> Now, I don't think I'm exactly shaking

up the field of psychology by suggesting

that as humans, we have this inherent

need to conjure up these heroes to help

us cope with our own feelings of

powerlessness. I mean, that's

essentially what Joseph Campbell's

entire work is based off of. There are

over 8 billion people on this planet,

and really only about a thousand of

those have any major worldwide influence

at any given time. So that leaves 7

bill999,999,000

of us to come to terms with the limited

scope of our lives and the fact that the

vast majority of what we do will likely

not matter long after we've died. This

is not a fun thing to think about or to

accept. You're probably here because you

want to get ahead of most of those

people. But today, I want to take a

detour from our usual make more, buy

more, [ __ ] more programming and argue

for,

well, coming to terms with your own

mediocrity, your own averess.

>> This man is overcasted.

>> Now, I know that's not super sexy or

exciting, but hear me out because I

think this is actually way more

important. Everything in life is a

trade-off. Some of us are born with high

aptitudes for academic learning. Others

are born with great physical skills.

Others are really athletic. Others are

artistic. Others can solve a Rubik's

cube in 3 seconds flat. In terms of

skills and talents, humans are a wildly

diverse group of smelly creatures. Sure,

what we end up accomplishing in life

ultimately depends on our practice and

effort. But we are all born with

different aptitudes and potentials.

Let's imagine all those aptitudes and

potentials on a graph. Here is what is

called a bell curve. Now, any of you who

have taken a statistics class and

survived it will recognize it. A bell

curve is quite simple. Take a population

of people, like let's say people who

play golf at least once a year. The

horizontal axis represents how good they

are at golf. Further to the right means

that they're really good. Further to the

left means that they're like me and

they're [ __ ] terrible. Now, notice

that it gets really thin at the far ends

of the curve. That means that there are

a few people who are really, really good

and a few people who are really, really

terrible. The majority will fall into

the mediocre middle. Now, we can apply a

curve in this way to pretty much

anything in a population. Height,

weight, emotional maturity, wages, how

often people like to [ __ ] and so on and

so forth. For example, this is Michael

Jordan dunking a basketball. It is well

known that he is one of the best to ever

do it. Therefore, he is all the way on

the right side of the curve, better than

99.9999%

of people who have ever dunked a

basketball ever. Then you have this guy.

Obviously, he's no Michael Jordan. In

fact, chances are many of you watching

this right now could probably do better

than this guy. That means he's all the

way on the left side of the bell curve

and extreme on the other side. Now, we

stand in awe of MJ because he's more

athletic than all of us combined. We

laugh at the unathletic guy because he's

less athletic than pretty much all of

us. Both are at different extremes of

the bell curve. And well, as you guessed

it, most of us are part of the majority

in the middle. We all have our own

strengths and weaknesses, but the fact

is most of us are pretty average at most

things we do. Even if you're truly

exceptional at one thing, say math or

jump rope or making money from crypto

scams, chances are you're pretty average

at everything else. That's just the

nature of life. That's the nature of

being a human being. To become truly

great at something, you have to dedicate

so much time and energy to it. And

because none of us have infinite time

and energy, basically none of us can be

truly exceptional at more than one or

two things in our entire lives.

Statistically, we can very confidently

say that it's basically impossible for

somebody to be an extraordinary

performer in all areas of their life,

like a Bruce Wayne. And for most of us,

even more than one area of our life. I

mean, it's like if you're lucky, you can

be extraordinary at one thing. But if

we're being honest, most of us don't

even achieve that. And sure enough, you

see this in the world all around you.

Brilliant businessmen are often fuckups

in their personal lives. Extraordinary

athletes are often shallow and dumb as

the [ __ ] souls of their thousand

special edition shoes. Most celebrities

are just as clueless about life as the

people who gawk at them and follow their

every move. Pick any notable online

personality and follow them for long

enough and it's not hard to notice all

the ways in which they are average or

below average. You have the health gurus

whose relationships are a mess, the

relationship gurus whose finances are a

mess, the financial gurus have no

friends or social life. Or take me, you

will not meet someone with more mediocre

health habits than I do. But that's only

because I'm exceptionally fun at a

party.

So, if you're struggling to come to

terms with your mediocrity, maybe you

should consider therapy or the sponsor

of today's video, BetterHelp. Now, lofty

terms like success and mediocrity can be

difficult to wrangle and contextualize,

but talking with a therapist

specifically tailored to your needs and

wants can hopefully make the process a

bit easier. Now, through an onboarding

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with no questions asked. Therapy has

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We are all for the most part pretty

average people and it's the extremes

that get all the publicity. Now, we all

kind of intuitively know this, but we

rarely think or talk about it. The vast

majority of us will never truly be

exceptional at well, pretty much

anything. And that's okay. So, here's

the problem. I would argue that we have

this expectation or dare I say

entitlement more today than any other

time in history that we should be

exceptional that we should be

extraordinary at everything but our

attention is limited. There is no way we

can process the title waves of

information flowing through the internet

at any given time. Therefore, the only

ones that break through and catch our

attention are the truly exceptional

pieces of information. the 99.999th

percentile, the Michael Jordans of

everything. All day, every day, we are

flooded with the truly extraordinary,

the best of the best, the worst of the

worst, the greatest physical feats, the

funniest jokes, the most upsetting news,

the scariest threats. Non-stop.

Everything is Bruce Wayne. We are a

bunch of normal people living in a Bruce

Wayne world where everything is expected

to be extraordinary. Our lives today are

filled with information coming from the

extremes of the bell curve. Because in

the media, that's what gets eyeballs and

the eyeballs bring dollars. That's it.

Yet, the vast majority of our life

continues to reside in the humdrum

middle. It's my belief that this flood

of extreme information has conditioned

us to erroneously believe that

exceptional is the new normal. And since

all of us are rarely exceptional, we all

feel pretty damn insecure and terrible

about it. Paradoxically, we think being

better than 99% of people should be

standard without realizing the

mathematical reality. That for every

hundred of us who attempt this, 99 of us

will fail. There's a kind of

psychological tyranny in our culture

today. A sense that we must always be

proving that we're special, that we're

unique, that we're exceptional all the

[ __ ] time. Then we watch three Tik

Toks of other people doing something

amazing and we get down on ourselves for

not being as good as them. For example,

take a montage like this. This doesn't

even register to us as unique or

incredible. To get the five seconds of

incredible footage likely spent years

and years and years and years practicing

their craft as well as dozens of hours

of recording just to get a perfect

5-second shot. Yet, we're not exposed to

those years of practice. We're not

exposed to the hours of failed footage.

We're not exposed to all the mistakes,

to all the mediocrity. We're merely

exposed to the best five seconds of

every single person's life all the time.

Then we watch us and we forget it within

minutes because we're on to the next

thing and the next incredible thing and

the next incredible thing. Now, I know

what you're saying, but but but Mark, if

I'm not going to be special or

extraordinary, what's the point of doing

anything? Look, let's be honest. I click

baited you here with a title promising

you how to be extraordinary, how to be

better than 99% of people. And now I

just crushed your soul and bored you for

10 minutes about how everyone, even the

ones you look up to, are mostly average

at most things.

>> What? No. No. What?

>> And here's the point. This idea that you

can get ahead of 99% of people in life,

it's kind of [ __ ] because even if

you pick one domain, like let's say

money, let's say you just want to make a

[ __ ] ton of money to do so, you will

have to give up so much in other areas

of your life that you will still feel

painfully hopelessly ordinary. I mean,

there's a reason why the 10 richest men

in the world have been divorced 13

times. A lot of people are afraid to

accept mediocrity because they believe

that if they accept being mediocre, then

they will never actually achieve

anything. their life will never mean

anything, that they'll never improve at

anything, that their life won't get

better. And I find this sort of thinking

to be very dangerous, because once you

accept the premise that life is only

worthwhile if it is truly notable or

great, then you basically accept the

fact that most of the human population

sucks and is worthless. And ethically

speaking, that is like a very dark place

to go. Not to mention, when you face

your own inevitable mediocrity, you will

not have any compassion for it. But

let's put our mental health and

philosophical arguments aside for a

second because most people's problem

with accepting mediocrity is actually

more practical. They worry that if I

accept being average, then I'll never

achieve anything great. So, don't I have

to like convince myself that I'm going

to be one of the rare extraordinary ones

to actually do the work to succeed? This

too is totally [ __ ] ass backwards

because if you actually look at the

people who become truly exceptional at

something, they do so not because they

believe they're exceptional. On the

contrary, they become amazing because

they are obsessed with improvement. And

that obsession with improvement stems

from an unairring belief that they are

in fact not great at all. That they are

completely mediocre. That they are

average, below average. Why should

people care about Tyler the creator?

>> They shouldn't. I'm not [ __ ] I actually

suck. It's tight.

>> And this is the great irony about

ambition. If you wish to be smarter and

more successful than everybody else,

then you will always feel like a

failure. If you wish to be the most

loved and the most popular, then you

will always feel alone. If you wish to

be the most powerful and admired, then

you will feel weak and impotent. All of

this every person can be extraordinary

and achieve greatness stuff is basically

just jerking off your ego. It is [ __ ]

that is sold to you to make you feel

good for a few minutes and to get you

through the week without hanging

yourself in a cubicle. It's a message

that tastes good going down, but in

reality is nothing more than empty

calories that make you emotionally fat

and bloated. It's the proverbial Big Mac

for your heart and your brain. The

ticket to emotional health, like

physical health, is eating your veggies.

That is through accepting the bland and

mundane truths of life. A light salad of

you're actually pretty average in the

grand scheme of things and some steamed

broccoli of the vast majority of your

life will be unremarkable, unnotable,

and unexciting. But that's totally okay

because you're still a worthwhile human

anyway. And this will taste very bad at

first, very bad. And you will avoid

eating it. But once it's ingested, your

body will actually wake up feeling more

potent and more alive. After all, that

constant stress and pressure to always

be something amazing, to do the next big

thing, it will be lifted off your back.

And that stress and anxiety of feeling

inadequate will dissipate. And the

knowledge and acceptance of your own

mundane existence will actually free you

to accomplish all of the amazing things

that you wish for yourself without the

judgment, without the expectation, and

without the pressure. You will have a

growing appreciation for life's basic

experiences. You will learn to measure

yourself through a new and healthier

means, the pleasures of a simple

friendship, of creating something new,

of helping a person in need, of reading

a good book, of laughing while eating a

salad. It sounds boring, doesn't it?

That's because these things are average.

But maybe, maybe they're average for a

reason, because they are what actually

matter. Thank you for watching this

video. I hope it helped. And if you

liked it, you should watch this video,

too.

It's a different video and it's kind of

it's a couple years old. My hair was

very different. But if you like this

one, you'll probably like that one, too.

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