You Are Not OPRAH

There is so much information out there to consume about great people. Documentaries, biographies, TV series, Twitter accounts, Instagram brags, YouTube shows, news articles and on and on and on. Greatness is everywhere and everyone aspires to be the next greatest in a long line of greatness.

Let me be the first to tell you that watching a Michael Jordan documentary doesn’t make you Michael Jordan. Reading the Steve Jobs biography doesn’t make you Steve Jobs. Watching Oprah every day doesn’t make you a world-class interviewer and media mogul.

Nine years ago when I first read Walter Isaacson’s book about Steve Jobs I immediately believed that being like Jobs was the only way to be a leader. I started to act as he did. I began treating people the way that he did. But here’s the thing - I am not Steve Jobs. Not even close. All I did was piss people off by being an asshole.

I’m not Steve Jobs and it’s unlikely that I’ll ever achieve what he achieved in his life. I am not Oprah Winfrey and it’s unlikely that I’ll ever achieve what she has achieved in her life.

I’m comfortable now to admit this but it’s hard in your early 20’s to think that you aren’t going to be great. I have a Greek mother who constantly instilled in me a sense of greatness and I am eternally grateful for that. But it’s also a lot of pressure to believe that you deserve to be great.

Nobody deserves greatness.

Don’t feel the pressure. Don’t try to be somebody else. Don’t try to live their lives and take the same path they did.

Or, feel the pressure and do the work for yourself. Find your own path. Carve out your own chunk of greatness.

We live in a world of misalignment. We see the end results of greatness, the greatness itself. You see Apple launching products that shape the future and define the present. You see Oprah interviewing the most incredible people in the world and growing her media empire. You see Jordan winning championship after championship but you never see (or choose not to see) the work that goes into their success. The sacrifices they make to change the world. The depression, the elation, the turmoil, the loss, the pain and everything in between.

You are not Oprah. You are not Jordan. You are not Jobs. Nor am I.

You are whoever you are and whether you like it or not, that has to be enough. Jobs, Jordan, Oprah and their equals all put the work in for many, many decades to gain the kind of success we aspire to when we see them online or read about their fame and wealth. None of it comes easy. Nobody owes us anything. Nobody handed the greatest people their greatness.

Expectation is the thief of joy and if you spend your life believing that you should be as rich as Warren Buffet, as talented as Lupita Nyong'o, as smart as Oprah or as successful as Michael Jordan then you’re only going to live a life of disappointment. Their lives are extraordinary and the exception.

We all have the ability to live a great life but perhaps expectation is killing our joy.

Speak or Act - it's about change

I watched an interesting film last night. Perhaps one of the best films I've seen in fact.I felt inspired, I felt motivated and moved to change.I wasn't inspired to change anything in particular, just to move towards change, changing things, change as an existential concept and change as a tangible and achievable goal.Then in other aspects of my everyday life I am faced with people who speak of change, you talk of change as if it is the next big thing. It's not. Change is the biggest thing. Now. And guess what? It always will be.Change is what great people aspire to and change is what great people achieve.Change the way you write, talk, live, drive to work, answer the phone, your house, car or blog design, change anything. Whatever it is, we all want change.I am not one to post rhetorical questions but let me ask, are you a person who talks about change or are you changing the world?

Great men were destined to be great

I have been struggling lately with a bit of internal strife. I am a thinking man. I always have been. I think alot, all the time, non-stop, about everything.My latest mind-bender is whether great men (and women) would be great in any era or context or was it there social background and influences that moulded them?Please don't tell me that it's a mixture of both, that nature and nurture both apply in equal amount. A spoon full of sugar doesn't make the medicine go down. I want an answer. I have an answer in my head but it keeps becoming null and void as this week as progressed.Let me explain what I mean by great men. Firstly the reason that I don't refer to great people is because I am a man and I relate to great men moreso than I do to great women. Margaret Thatcher, Mother Theresa and others were and are still great women and human beings. But I want to focus more on men like Ghandi, Mandela, Richard Branson, Mark Shuttleworth, Bill Gates, Hitler, Stalin, Mugabe, Biko and others.These men may not all have been good men, but they were all great. One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist just as one man's greatness is another man's failure.But it is undisputable that Hitler was a great leader. He had the entire world fighting against him. That is greatness. He was not a good man, and was in fact an evil man, but great nonetheless.My question is this: Would these men still have been great if things in their lives were different? If they had loving parents, if they lived in Mexico instead of Germany or were wealthy instead of poor. If Branson was a trust-fund baby would he still have had the drive? If Ghandi lived somewhere that promoted equality instead of segregation would he still have been great? If Mandela was white would he have helped to end apartheid?I personally believe that these men are great and would have been great irrespective of their surroundings. I firmly believe that great men are great and are destined for greatness be it evil or good, rich or poor, greatness prevails.