Is Greatness Limiting?

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For a number of months now I have been on a #CreateGreatness push to try to bring out the greatness in others in order to empower people to remove the limitations from the thoughts and actions that they set for themselves. But today I want to explore the idea that greatness itself may be limiting.

I believe that we all have ability to be great at something, but most of us struggle to find what that thing is. We let social norms and expectations, material possessions, and the fear of failure dictate our actions and desires. This makes it exponentially more difficult to sell out for what fundamentally stimulates and excites us--the area of our lives in which we are most likely to excel. Without this complete commitment to the cause that we care most about, the likelihood of achieving the subjective level of greatness, and subsequently our ability to positively impact others, appears to suffer.

But is greatness something that itself limits someone's ability to reach this level? Meaning, once you are considered great, does that make continuing to be considered great more difficult? Does the slope continue to get slipperier and steeper as you ascend? More importantly, and the question that is really on my mind, does setting your expectations on greatness limit your ability to achieve beyond this?

Are you, in a sense, setting yourself up for achieving a lower level of greatness than if you had your sights set on something higher, or nothing at all? Or will having such a high marker to reach only allow you to catapult yourself further once there? Are there different levels or a continuum of greatness that can be achieved, or is it a finite point that is equal for all? And are we measuring greatness by what everybody else is currently doing, what has been considered the best up to this point, or what we believe the individual has to offer?

I want to explore these types of questions on this blog throughout the month of March and possibly beyond. If all goes well, I'm not sure that I will actually answer any of them, but rather I will only find more questions to pursue further. And to me, that would be a month very well spent because while my thoughts may not be any closer to finding answers, my actions may be.

But maybe that's the point, because if greatness is to be attained, I'm not sure the answers of "how" are necessarily needed, or if it is the continual formation and exploration of questions and the pursuit of achievement that allows someone to create their greatness.

Be great.

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