Not YOUR greatness compared to anyone else’s but YOUR greatness. We live in a world with a wide range of emotional, physical, mental, financial and spiritual states between ourselves; it is easy to compare our lives to someone else’s when making our personal judgments. Yes, I get the strategy of knowing that your worst day is someone else’s best day to not get down on yourself; however, that can lead to living a huge lie like I did for years, but I wrote a whole 365 page book about those days and included twenty one of my most memorable clients; back to you! Do you have a system that helps you stay accountable to YOUR greatness? If so, what are the areas you focus on daily?
This may be one of the most important reflections of your life for several reasons; how you judge your greatness is influencing someone else’s; if your system overlooks certain details, the road towards your greatest potential may become hindered; your lifespan depends on your system. This message is only going to impact a certain type of person because for the most part, most members of our human race are conformists. The race has a track record of scaring or even killing the oddballs, so in order to consider these paragraphs you will be one of those few who are comfortable with the discomfort of going towards the unknown.
To give you an example, a close friend’s story from early April comes to mind. To help with the flow, and to keep my friend’s name private, let’s call her Maria. Maria is about five foot five and based on her self assessment, she has an “hourglass figure”. Maria also has a history of speaking her mind; if she feels it, she says it. Recently, Maria saw an old friend of hers and in their conversation, she mentioned that her friend’s butt job looked good. At this point of the conversation, I said, “No you didn’t!” and started laughing and she replied, “Yes, I did!” Her friend did not take any offense and divulged all the information about how the surgery went. Maria listened, turned around and said, “Girl, you see that I have more than enough on my own!” Her friend’s reply is the entire point of me sharing this story. She looked at Maria’s rear end and said, “It’s ok, but you don’t have any projection.” This means that Maria’s bottom had an alright width, but based on her friend’s perception, it did not stick out enough. How do you think Maria took this opinion?
Maria laughed it off and has no plans of getting a surgery. This was not the first time she heard a comment like that one. Her system of greatness is based on her personal assessment; what other people think of her rear end does not sway the decisions she makes about her body. We have known each other since 2013 and over the years her greatness has continued to evolve based on her rules. Her career goals, body goals and relationship goals have gone against the most popular opinions; however, she is happy, healthy and most importantly, making her life choices based on a personal priority list that does not include anyone else’s opinion. But wait a minute! Maria was not always like this. In her late teens and during her twenties, what other people thought set many of her guidelines. Peer pressure, family input and who she was dating at the time influenced many of her choices. There came a time in her life when she noticed that she was not being authentic, and instead of living anymore lies, her path towards where she is today began.
If you have noticed that you are still playing by juvenile rules and you are an adult, I offer the following suggestion. The Four Pillars are the most important areas of a human’s life, in my humble opinion; health, emotional intelligence, hunger to gain knowledge, and purpose. If you have a sit down with yourself and notice that your most important areas are for instance; how people view you, your social media followers, how many men/women you sleep with, the size of my house/car/jewelry, etc., based on the track record of millions of people, you may be missing out on essential Four Pillar development. I am not attempting to rain on anyone’s parade either. If you believe that those areas are more important, more power to you; in my humble opinion, they are not more important than your Four Pillar grades.
Why does this even matter? The Four Pillars have no set destinations; once that road is traveled you can get better and better and better every single day for the rest of your existence. The famous decline that many go through is because of choices and most choices stem from their personal system of greatness. For instance, have you ever heard “as people progress through adulthood to old age, there is an accelerating decline in their mental functioning” (e.g., see Horn, 1970; Schaie, Labouvie, & Buech, 1973)? New studies have found that for “some measures of intellectual functioning there is no age-associated decrease. In fact, for some measures, there seems to be an increase”( Lenner, 2002). Do you know how many older people set their systems of greatness based on guidelines that are completely false? Or who stopped pursuing higher levels of self production because of believing that their best days were over? With that answer in mine, do you know how many people are cheating themselves out of higher life frequencies because they allowed humanity’s guidelines to rule their thoughts, actions and plans? Since you cannot change anyone else’s system, please take some time to see if there need to be any adjustments to yours.
Four Pillar Action Plan Step: Today write down the Four Pillars and honestly grade yourself in each area. One being the lowest and ten being the highest. Reflect on how you usually spend your days. Based on your Four Pillar grades and your daily activity, do you see the connection? Usually this awareness is enough for a person to start slowly making changes. There must be an understanding of how your priorities need to change before you commit to altering your daily schedule. If you do not see the long term benefit of making adjustments, they will not be made. Remember, this is bigger than just about you. This is about becoming a better example for the people who look up to you as well. Commit to making one change in your schedule tomorrow to increase the grade in your lowest pillar.
Kinja’s Current Reality: No one can judge anyone else’s journey, so I assume that everyone is being honest about what they convey in person and on social media. This eliminates me from becoming a secret “hater” and transforms everything I see into a source of inspiration. I have been that faker in my past lives, so I realize that one’s perception is their reality; for this reason I will continue to simply manage my pillars while raising my personal bar every day, while competing with no one else except who I was the day before. Since I know that each human has a unique set of fingerprints, there is no pressure to be anything other than the absolute best version of myself. With this outlook, failure on any level is impossible. To dive deeper into understanding the Four Pillar system, explore the 365 page manual at any time. Regardless, next week I will see you again in another episode of the Decade Series.
References
Richard M. Lerner. (2002). Concepts and Theories of Human Development: Vol. 3rd ed. Psychology Press.
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