Transcript
Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is the episode for Monday, February 12th, 2024. Just a little bit after midnight here. I am going to talk today about rare excellency.
Rare excellence? That sounds better. So I was thinking about myself and how I think sometimes I believe that I am quite normal in my skill of conversation or normal in my way of connecting with people or talking about emotions or dealing with emotional conflict, such things as this. And just thinking that maybe I'm actually not so normal. Maybe I am quite above normal, not just a little bit above normal, but maybe I'm really above normal. And I think in something like this, it's maybe hard to know how rare of a skill it is or how excellent the skill is. But then I started thinking about Jon Stewart, who came back today to host The Daily Show after quite a few years away. And watching him and going, man, I think this guy is really good at what he does. And or you know the other day watching steven colbert and um on this after midnight show there was wayne brady and kevin smith two comedians who were on there just thinking man wayne brady is really good and pulling back and thinking but how good are they thinking about the super bowl i played football growing up american football for my non-american listeners And when I look at the Super Bowl and I watch those quarterbacks throw that ball, I go, oh, my God, that is incredible. They are so good. But even then, it's hard for me to remember just how rare they are in society for their size, for their speed, their strength, their athletic ability, their intelligence, their work ethic. I mean those combinations are very hard to find it's something I can't remember I think it's something like 10% of high school maybe it's like 10% of high school football players go on to play college football and then 10% of college go to the pros or less so it's like 1% of everyone who plays high school football makes it to the pros but I think it's actually it's probably much less, so you think how rare are these people especially the ones who are winning these championships championships over and over again.
And so just trying to take that and think about maybe some of our own skills, where maybe we think we're actually quite average in our skills, or maybe we know we're like a little bit above average. But really curious to see what are some of the things that we are really, really, really good at that would be very rare, very hard to find other people who are also good at these skills. And it doesn't have to be a well-established field. It can just be something that we're good at in general because of the unique combination of our background and our environment and our skills and our interests so maybe somebody is like the best at making cheesecake like they're just very very very very good at making cheesecake maybe not the other stuff but cheesecake they're very good at or maybe like a specific type of cheesecake there's a japanese cheesecake place around here so maybe like very good at making japanese cheesecake cake. Or maybe very good at AI, programming AI. Or maybe it's very good at sales. Maybe it's selling of beer. Maybe it's selling of something else, right? And so maybe it's just really curious to pause and reflect. Because I think a lot of times maybe we think we're normal, that we just kind of fit in. But maybe there is something that we are very, very excellent at doing and there aren't that many people who do it.
And are there things, you know, that we are just that much of an outlier in? Who knows? But I find it an interesting reflection question, at least, or reflection journey. As I think about it for myself, it's like, how much has it hindered me in some way where I look at some of my skills and go, I'm just like everyone else. Yeah, maybe I'm a little bit better. What if I actually looked at some of these skills and says, I might do this better than almost everyone I've met. What does that mean? Is that one in a hundred, one in a thousand, one in 10,000. What is the rarity of it?
And if we can find certain things that we do so rarely and we do them well and other people are looking for them, hey, maybe we have something that both can bring us joy but also help a lot of people in this world. So maybe it's me doing, I'd say five-minute reflections, but I'm way past five minutes. Actually, not way, it's almost six minutes. Maybe it's me doing off-the-cuff reflections into a podcast and being able to upload it within just a few minutes of recording it and not trying to be so overly edited and so overly curated. I don't know. Well, I guess something I can reflect on more, I'm curious to hear what other people think I do really well. And curious for you to reflect on what you do really well. There's an exercise called Reflected Best Self Exercise I heard about at the University of Michigan.
Maybe I could partake in that one day where I ask other people what they think I do really well or my best self really is. But we can go into that another time as I'm running out of steam and the old refrigerator just kicked on, so I don't know if you heard that in the recording.
All right, y'all. Well, I will talk to you soon. and take care of my rare, excellent friends.
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