Being “average” has become the new standard of failure.

The worst thing

you can be is in the middle of the pack, the middle of the bell curve. When
a culture’s standard of success is to “be extraordinary,” it then becomes
better to be at the extreme low end of the bell curve than to be in the
middle, because at least there you’re still special and deserve attention.
Many people choose this strategy: to prove to everyone that they are the
most miserable, or the most oppressed, or the most victimized.

And that obsession with improvement stems from an unerring belief

that they are, in fact, not that great at all. It’s anti-entitlement. People who
become great at something become great because they understand that
they’re not already great—they are mediocre, they are average—and that
they could be so much better.

truths such as “Your actions actually don’t matter that much in the grand
scheme of things” and “The vast majority of your life will be boring and not
noteworthy, and that’s okay.”
the knowledge and acceptance of your own mundane existence will
actually free you to accomplish what you truly wish to accomplish, without
judgment or lofty expectations.
But maybe they’re ordinary for a reason: because they are what actually
matters.

Parkinson’s law: “Work expands so as to fill up the time available for its
completion.”

Murphy’s law: “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.”

We all have values for ourselves. We protect these values. We try

to live up to them and we justify them and maintain them. Even if we don’t
mean to, that’s how our brain is wired.

I have both some good news and some bad news for you: there is little
that is unique or special about your problems. That’s why letting go is so
liberating.
My recommendation: don’t be special; don’t be unique. Redefine your
metrics in mundane and broad ways. Choose to measure yourself not as
a rising star or an undiscovered genius. Choose to measure yourself not
as some horrible victim or dismal failure. Instead, measure yourself by
more mundane identities: a student, a partner, a friend, a creator.
The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more
everything will seem to threaten you. For that reason, define yourself in
the simplest and most ordinary ways possible.
This often means giving up some grandiose ideas about yourself: that
you’re uniquely intelligent, or spectacularly talented, or intimidatingly
attractive, or especially victimized in ways other people could never
imagine. This means giving up your sense of entitlement and your belief
that you’re somehow owed something by this world. This means giving up
the supply of emotional highs that you’ve been sustaining yourself on for
years. Like a junkie giving up the needle, you’re going to go through
withdrawal when you start giving these things up. But you’ll come out the
other side so much better.