Some people say you should never meet your heroes. I totally disagree.
Disappointed by your heroes?
The idea behind meeting your heroes these people say is that you’re always going to be disappointed. And I would say sometimes it might be the case but if you’re choosing heroes of good character, who are making a positive contribution, I think you’re more likely to be motivated by meeting these people than anything else.
Afraid to meet your heroes?
Now the other thing that people are afraid of is maybe by meeting someone who’s much further down the road of success than you are, you might feel intimidated and maybe unwilling to start down that road. But that’s not really a fair thing to you, because it’s never fair to compare yourself to someone who is much further down the road than you are. You might sit back and say, “Oh my goodness! How can I possibly ever get to that level? He or she is so much better than I am. I don’t know how I can compete. And if you have that feeling you may just hold back and not really put your put forth your full effort because you are afraid of failure. But to illustrate the reason why I think this is not a good idea, I am raising young kids and it’s amazing the amount of growth you get between the ages of 8 and 9; but, the amount of growth you get in that one year is completely eclipsed by the amount of growth in the one year between one year and two years old. And that for a two year old a year is half your life half of your growth up to that point happened in that one year whereas if you’re nine it’s maybe 10% or so. You’re still advancing but that you get that first big growth and learning and skill development in those first few years and once you have develop the full breath what you’re trying to accomplish, there’s more incremental gains. You’re trying to become better at what you already know how to do. But you would be surprised just how much progress you can make if you hang on for that first year or two. It’ll get to be maybe half as good as the guy who’s been doing it for ten years or maybe you can be 75% of the person’s been doing it for five years. We look at it that way. If you’re trying to compare yourself to your heroes, it’s a much better idea to compare yourself to how your competitor or your hero was doing things at the same level of progress at the same time. Now if you compare yourself at one year into it with your hero’s progress at one year, you may be really surprised at just how well you’re stacking up and often exceeding your hero’s progress, because you have been more of a map than maybe they had when they were going through the struggles.
Avoid Self-Limiting Behavior
The other thing about maybe a lack of confidence you had by meeting with your heroes is that it becomes possible for you to engage in very self limiting behavior, because of your level of intimidation. I’ll give you an example I’ve been to a number of conferences and it’s amazing that oftentimes the keynote speaker is sitting alone at a table during some part of the conference. I thought this is crazy because here these people are spending often thousands of dollars to bring in someone with a wealth of knowledge and experience and nobody is trying to tap that and that why that person is alone. So I try to make it a point to sit down with the people who are there to speak if they are not otherwise engaged. And I’m going to engage them because I am NOT going to be intimidated by someone’s level of expertise.
Your Heroes are People Too – And often cool people!
I’ve found that these people are usually very generous with their time and energy and they’ll take all the time to answer questions you have. And once you do that, you realize that these people despite their skill, their talent, and the fact that you look up to them, in many ways they’re just people just like you. And when you take some time to get to know these people, they aren’t so–that the mystique rubs off a little bit. They become human to you and when you do that. When they become human to you not only are they usually very friendly and maybe you’re building a new relationship, it becomes easier for you to picture yourself in that chair going forward. So always take the time to meet with someone and just a couple of weeks ago, I was at a conference and a famous comedian, Owen Benjamin, was at a conference and again it was before conference a breakout session and he was sitting alone, so I took the time to sit down with him for a half hour conversation. Guy has a brilliant mind, like most comedians — very interesting ideas and allowed me to get to know him. And I hope to connect with him down the road a bit more. So never be intimidated by the people who were further along the road than you are now.
Get Consistent Feedback
Another thing I want to encourage you to do is to try to find a way to get constant feedback about how you are progressing. One of the cool things about sitting down with a professional on your road is that it allows you to gauge where you are in terms of progress relative to people you’re trying to measure yourself against. And this gives you some good insight about how you’re coming along. I’m involved with a Toastmasters group which dedicates itself to help its members be to become professional speakers and every time we bring in a keynote speaker for our conferences, we make it a point to sit down with them and just have a discussion. The whole club with the keynote speaker and we first started doing this we realized just how much we didn’t know. And we knew we had a lot to learn but every time we did this. We’ve been doing it for over five years now. We find ourselves closer and closer to where they are in their careers and in some cases were actually thinking a somewhat higher level than they are in some aspects of how they perform their work. And when you realize that you’ve achieved parity and in some cases you’re advanced beyond where the people who are doing the thing you want to do are at, that’s an amazing sense of confidence and belief in yourself can emerge from that. So always take the time to meet with people to get that sense of feedback so again don’t compare yourself to people to where your heroes are. Maybe compare them to where they were at your level of development. Don’t limit yourself. Don’t cut yourself off, because you’re too intimidated. And always, always, always build a way to constantly be benchmarking yourself along the road to success.
If you do those three things, you’ll always find a way to have a fun time and not disappointed by your heroes.
Thanks a lot.
Talk to you next time.
