Think of the greatest athletes out there, Christiano Ronaldo, Lebron James, Tiger Woods, LT, and CC Sabathia. Now think of this, no matter how hard to try you can't be them. I take that back, you should never say the word can't. You will never be them. No matter how hard you try to be them, wear the clothes they wear, eat the food they eat, imitate them to the highest degree, yet you can never be them. This goes the same for entertainers, programmers, entrepreneurs, politicians, and the like... You will never be them. This may come off a bit harsh to some, but think about it... There will never be another Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Bill Gates, Donald Trump. There will never be a next one of them either. This also applies to the iPhone and any other revolutionary electronic out there on the market. There can only be one.
I was listening to T.I.'s Paper Trail CD, and many times he says that if you want to judge him you have to walk in his shoes. In essence to understand why he does what he does you have to be him. I believe this applies the same to the greats of everything. To fully understand one of them you have to be them, and that is not possible. We can only be ourselves. Even though we will never be them, we still can be great. We still can be the greatest to do whatever it is we do, or create the greatest gadget of all time. Greatness comes from within. Not from following in the footsteps of someone else. We can follow whoever we want, but if its not inside of you greatness will not emerge.
I am a big advocate of being an individual, of being yourself. "You can not be me, and that's what makes me better than you" is my mantra. This may sound a big self centered but its the honest truth. I have a friend who writes for a video game blog. No matter what I do, I will never be a better gamer than he. My gamer rating will never be higher than his. His passion for gaming far outshines mine. My best friend is constantly thinking about the future. He is always reading, thinking, networking, and working towards his future goals and business ideas. I envy him for this. So I tried to read the same books he does, constantly take notes like he does, and do what he does. I discovered that I can only read so many self-help books. I don't like thinking all the time, sometimes I feel like vegging out and being a waste of space. One more of my friends is very creative. He draws, writes poetry, and is very good at organizing himself, and his things. I constantly am stealing tips from him on how to be more creative with my life. Yet no matter how hard I try I can never match his creativity.
No matter how hard I try to imitate my friends I learn that I can only match them to a certain point. If you think its hard to match your friends, how do you think you can match someone who gets paid to perform at a world class level constantly? What I've learned though is to be able to take something from one of my friends and put my own spin on it. My gaming friend blogs about games, I blog about life. I try to read as much as my entrepreneur friend, but I read not only self-help and business books, but philosophy, mystery, and fiction. My creative friend draws, I take pictures, he organizes, and I minimize and simplify.
I have learned to take traits that I like in my friends and apply them in my own life. I have a better chance of growing this way and becoming my own person rather than to try and imitate their lives. The problem I have discovered is as much as I try to live their life, its their life. It is not my life to live. The experiences that they have, I do not. They journey they have traveled, I have not. I can only follow what I see from them, and that is only a small portion of their life. This makes it hard for me to imitate everything they do see and are. I have learned to use them as a guide to becoming a better person.
I have learned to stop trying to be the "next great" someone else, and start being the "only great" me. Because in the end, there can only be one me, and that's what makes me better than you.
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