Seeking and Accepting
Mediocrity as Excellence!

Home Featured Articles Phil Stevens Mediocrity

The road to an all around lowered baseline. I recently had a discussion on my facebook page that caused quite the response so I thought it warranted further discussion here.

The discussion began as my simple note of the ever-growing number of people/clients with eating disorders, i.e., bulimia or anorexia. Also, the increase seems more so in young men/boys than in young women (who oddly may be taking the opposite route and getting larger). I also suggested there appears to be a lack of desire in people to want to put in the work, or even desire, to carry around an above average amount of lean mass and strength. The desire for men to be masculine, or masculine simply as an acceptable trait (by the majority) seems to have passed. That the large, the strong, the “men”, are truly a dying breed today.

To clarify, in my original statement I was not knocking on people whom have a healthy relationship with training and nutrition and are meeting their goals of getting crazy lean, ripped, or shredded - that's all good. I am talking about a growing population of people who have a real fear of body fat; a fear of adding any, a fear of athleticism, of work and a fear of waking up one day - HUGE. There appears to be a striving by young men to stay boys, and not progress into men.

Like most great discussions this did not stagnate, but evolved to greater issues. It moved on to a discussion about how “the masses have truly settled for an occasional glimpse of mediocrity!” (Shawn Phillips www.fullstrength.com) Sadly, like Kalle Beck added, most girls these days on average, outweigh, and can outperform their boyfriends.

That’s all good, and I am all for women being empowered and kicking ass, but even if we take this to a simple, primal, hormonal level this is impossible without an asserted effort put in to make it the norm, as opposed to the occasional genetic exception.

Shawn Phillips is exactly right; it’s more a desire and a huge push to be LESS. There’s a constant focus on deprivation and subtraction instead of a focus on the positives of growth and advancement; an actual defiance of your natural inclination to grow and mature. An ignorance that this early self imposed inhibition of your natural ability to grow, to build, get strong, will in and of itself remove the negative (body fat) by default and in a positive instead of negatively focused way.

The real problem however I think is like Shawn pointed out; it’s more than a fear of fat, a fear of growth, and maturity, and more a problem of the actual desire and goal of this generation to be less than they could be; a goal to hold themselves back from what they are able to do with little effort versus what they could accomplish if they were to strive to excel.

When did this happen? Why did this happen? Can we fix it, and how? When did it become unacceptable to show some desire, inner and outer strength, to reach more then you and others may think possible?

My friend Julie Watkins chimed in on this discussion and her recap of a recent viewing of the new movie, Twightlight with her young daughter. I can’t help but think it’s largely media driven like much of everything else is, but when and why? When did we get this shift where we as people, are measured not on our personal, mental and physical growth, to being measured on how much we can avoid it?

So...Want Even MORE Strength, Muscle-Building and Fat Loss Info, Just Like This? ...and get a FREE copy of "The Unnatural Athlete" ($29.95 value!), Charles Staley's most politically-incorrect views on training, nutrition, fat loss, muscle-building and more!

If you take the time to look, kids, young adults, are more revered by their peers for their ability to avoid hard work and achievement. These underachievers are put on a pedestal for how much outside product, “material goods,” they can obtain with as little mental, physical, and emotional work, stress, and growth they can put in. It’s the kid that has gained the ability to exist, to live as a zit on the ass of life, just along for the ride that gets the most accolades. WHY? I can’t help but know that this seeking and accepting of mediocrity and flat out underachievement as excellence today is simply a hard road to an all around lowered baseline, in our world, our country, and our lives on all fronts. A personal, physical, spiritual, and governmental down spiral. We need to demand it back somewhere, somehow. Leading by example and passing it on of course; but WE, those who have a love, a desire, and passion for growth, advancement, and joy of hard work and what it brings us need to again become the majority, or we will go the way of the dinosaur. I dread seeing that world - a world full of existence, but with a lack of life.

 

Click here to post your comments on this article in our Team Staley Forums!