The Audacity of Mediocrity

I could do that better. If only...

"All too often, it is audacity and not talent that moves an artist to center stage."

I came across this quote recently, and it got me thinking about something I've watched play out throughout my career, both in the people I've worked with and, if I'm honest, in the way I react to them.

I don't know about you, but I've found myself watching somebody achieve an extraordinary amount of success doing something that, in my own estimation, I could do considerably better. Maybe it's a speaker commanding an enormous audience, an entrepreneur who's built a wildly successful business around a fairly ordinary idea, or one of these personalities who has somehow convinced thousands of people that their particular brand of wisdom is worth paying attention to.

And yes, I've referred to some of these people as no-talent ass clowns.

It's a judgmental description, I know, but most of us have encountered somebody whose success seems wildly disproportionate to their actual ability, and wondered what the hell everybody else is seeing that we're apparently missing.

All you have to do is spend five minutes on Instagram watching some grown adult in a furry dog costume dancing around their living room, with a million followers, thousands of comments, and quite possibly a very lucrative business built around the whole spectacle, to appreciate how absurd our relationship with attention has become. And while I'm sitting there wondering how we've arrived at a place where pretending to be a golden retriever can be more commercially rewarding than years spent mastering a craft, somebody else is enjoying the show enough to keep coming back.

What Are We Actually Rewarding?

We carry an almost instinctive expectation that success should correspond with talent, and anyone who has spent real time in business or the creative world knows that relationship is a lot less predictable than we'd like. I've known extraordinarily talented people who struggled for years to be noticed, and others with fairly ordinary abilities who built enormous audiences, sometimes through access or timing or a fortunate introduction, but just as often because they pursued opportunities with a level of confidence the rest of us would call excessive.

Which makes me wonder whether audacity is a talent in its own right, just one we rarely recognize or admire.

The Comfort of "If Only"

There's a phrase that tends to follow that reaction, usually quietly... if only. If only I had the right connections, more time, the resources, or an opportunity to get in front of the right people.

I've entertained that one plenty, and the more I examine it, the more I see how conveniently those two words let us protect our assessment of what we're capable of. You might be absolutely right that you could write a better book than the one you're reading or build a better business than the one you're criticizing, but until you actually attempt it, that belief stays comfortably insulated from the possibility that reality has a different opinion.

The Rules We Create for Ourselves

Sometimes we become so convinced our work should speak for itself that we start treating the act of promoting it as slightly beneath us. We want recognition to arrive as a consequence of our abilities, preferably without the kind of self-promotion we find so distasteful in other people.

I see this constantly in my work with entrepreneurs. I'll try almost anything myself, usually more ideas than I can ever fully execute, so where I catch myself is on the other side of it, in the judging.

We want the opportunity, but we'd prefer somebody else recognize we deserve it.

We want people to discover our work, but we're uncomfortable asking them to pay attention.

And we want the success, provided we can get it without behaving like the people whose success we've spent so much time questioning.

Which means that if we've convinced ourselves pursuing attention is something only arrogant or less capable people do, we'll eventually start avoiding perfectly reasonable opportunities simply because we've associated the behavior with people we don't respect.

That's where resentment becomes useful, because our reaction to somebody else's success can reveal something about the rules we've created for ourselves.

I'm perfectly capable of recognizing mediocre work, and I'm in no hurry to pretend every successful person has some extraordinary gift the rest of us failed to appreciate. But it's worth asking why certain people get under our skin, particularly when they're succeeding where we have ambitions of our own. Some of it is watching somebody receive recognition we think belongs to people with greater ability, and some of it is watching them pursue the very opportunity we keep telling ourselves we'll get to once the circumstances are right. Usually it's both.

The Audacity to Find Out

I first read that quote as an observation about the unfairness of recognition, but the longer I've lived with it, the more I've come to believe the audacity is doing far more work than I was giving it credit for.

The person on that stage may have spent years asking for opportunities, enduring rejection, making introductions, promoting their work, and tolerating the judgment of people like me who wonder what qualifies them to be there in the first place. Maybe they're more talented than I realize, or maybe their greatest ability is a willingness to pursue something without needing the world to validate their qualifications first.

Either way, they've turned an ambition into an experience, while somebody else with potentially greater ability is still waiting for the circumstances that would make pursuing it feel appropriate. That's worth sitting with, especially for those of us who've spent years developing our abilities and convincing ourselves the quality of our work should eventually be enough.

Because there's a difference between believing we're capable of something and being willing to find out.

I still reserve the right to think somebody is a no-talent ass clown, and I'm sure I'll meet plenty more before my time here is finished. But dismissing somebody's abilities doesn't explain their accomplishments, and it tells me nothing useful about what I'm willing to pursue myself.

So the next time you encounter somebody whose success seems entirely disproportionate to their talent, spend a little less time wondering why they're standing on that stage and a little more time considering what their willingness to get there might be showing you.

You may very well be capable of doing it better, but how would you know?

I'd love to hear yours... what's the thing you've been telling yourself you'd do better, if only? Hit reply and tell me.

With gratitude, Deevo

Deevo is a brand strategist, identity architect, and founder of The Brand Storyteller. His work sits at the intersection of psychology, narrative, and strategic clarity, helping founders and executives figure out what they are actually building, who it is actually for, and why so much of their effort feels like it should be compounding faster than it does. He works privately with a small number of people at a time, which is either very intentional or very antisocial depending on who you ask. He does not call himself a coach. If you have read this far, you already know why. TheBrandStoryteller.com