bcg blog

What Others Want

The buttery smell of popcorn draws you in; but the squeaking shoes, shrill call of a whistle, and dull thud of a bouncing ball keeps you there. Friday nights are for high school sports and this chilly December night is no different. It’s early in the season and you’re just hoping to get a look at the local team’s squad for the first time.

The pep band sets off the twenty minute clock as both teams circle the court and report to their end for pre-game warm-ups. You scan both ends, gauging the observable difference in size and athleticism while unknowingly forming your own prediction for how the game will play out. Forming an opinion on such a small sample is dangerous, but fairly accurate in most circumstances.

At this point, the opposing team looks bigger and more athletic than your team. That doesn’t concern you though, your team doesn’t typically pass the ‘eye test’. You do have grounds for concern though: the warm-up routine at both ends looks ‘cool’. Smooth, fancy passes followed by missed layups and off-balance jump shots are the norm. You’ve watched your team enough to know that’s now how they traditionally warm-up.

Your coach notices it too.
Within five minutes of coming onto the court, the team is sent back to the locker room - not their customary routine. The opposing end continues preparation with their half speed, two line layups. Before you know it, your team returns to the floor. 

This time they look different though. There’s an obvious bounce in their step that was lacking before. The passes are on target and popping in and out of players’ hands. There is an urgency and purpose to your team’s warm-up now. They seem to have left the ‘cool’ in the locker room this time. 

Why Should We Care?
Far too often, success becomes nothing more than presenting a life we think others want. Much like the warm-ups described above, what we think others want rarely leads to true success. Basketball players think what others want is for their performance to appear easy, effortless. That’s ‘cool’ - difficult shots with minimal efforts.

Just like ‘cool’ cripples a basketball team, defining success by what others want does the same thing for your pursuit of excellence. In our pursuit to appease the masses we turn our back on ourselves. We exchange our own potential for a round of applause, our excellence for a few likes.

It never feels as good as we thought it would. 
The gap resides in what we perceive as the source of fulfillment. Approval is usually our first guess. Why shouldn’t it be? That’s what we’ve been conditioned to value our whole life. Plus, that external praise always seems to deliver that little jolt of warm comfort that makes us feel good, at least for a moment. It never lasts. We need another hit the next moment. 

The good news? Eventually, we all - yes, all - realize the futility of this pursuit and are forced (or choose) to adjust. Eventually what others want becomes secondary to our priorities. At some point, we begin pursuing who we were created to be instead of who others want us to be.

REAL TALK - Action Steps
The real question is: when is that time for you? Have you already made the change? If not, then when? Now is as good of a time as any! Here are a few ideas to help you go for it:

• Know Yourself 
  
  • Reflect, journal, pray … the mission is to know what you believe and why you believe it. Only through wrestling and coming to terms with these answers can you fully understand how you should be defining success. Until you know this, you will always default to what others think.
    

• Know Your Vices
  
  • Just as important as knowing what is central to our being is knowing what is most likely to pull us away from it. We can’t avoid what we’re not aware of. As we recognize these areas, we construct a specific plan to avoid or address these areas. Ignoring them is not an option.
    

• Know Your Foxhole
  
  • If you surround yourself with the right people, they want for you what you want for yourself. That’s what foxhole people do. They are an extension of your own personal mission. Trouble arises when we give attention to what those outside our foxhole want.
    

Nobody on the road to excellence cares about ‘cool’. Majority opinion does not equate to fulfillment. For the best, what others want is of virtually no concern. What they need, maybe. What they want, not so much.

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