Jan 13, 2019

Mediocre Me

“Only mediocre people are always at their best.”

Mediocre Mike

Mediocre Mike is the person I am when I’m running on autopilot.
Mediocre Mike is my everyday self. He’s the person that I am unless circumstances or intention require me to be better.
I’ve written about him before. I’ve called him MikeSim
and AutoMike. All the same guy. More references are at the bottom of the post

Mediocre Mike in “action”

Mediocre Mike drifts along in a dream. He reacts. He responds. He rarely reflects.
Something arises in his field of awareness, and Mediocre Mike runs a program that deals with it. He’s got lots of good programs. AutoOptimizer improves them from time to time. He’s done it well enough to have a moderately successful life.
Once in a while, the environment presents a crisis or an unmistakable opportunity. A challenge. Mediocre Mike handles it, still dreaming. He might seem more than mediocre to most people. But he’s just running programs and doing the least he can do.
But once in a while, the challenge takes more than Mediocre Mike can deliver. He goes off autopilot. He wakes Mike.
Mike does something. If it doesn’t work, Mike does something else. Mike creates new solutions. Mike deals with the unique situation.
Then Mike adds his new solution to his program store and goes back to dreaming.
Next time he won’t need to wake up.
Mediocre Mike does useful things. Sometimes they’re quite helpful. But they’re always the least he can do. They’re always a waste of potential: his potential and the potential in the situation.

Maximum Mike

Maximum Mike is an ideal: he’s the best version of myself that I can imagine being. I can never be Maximum Mike, but I can aspire to be him. I can move in that direction.
From a distance, I can envision Maximum Mike.
Maximum Mike wastes no time. He wastes none of his potential and wastes none of the potential around him. He’s awake, aware, and present. He’s filled with joy and love and shares his delight easily.
I can never be Maximum Mike, but when I wake up, I try to be More-than-Mediocre Mike.
“What’s a good word for that?” I ask Bobbi and explain what I want. “Meritorious,” she says without hesitation.
Meritorious. Exactly!
I love my brilliant wife.

Meritorious Mike

Meritorious Mike is a worthy version of me. Meritorious Mike deserves praise. From me, at least.
Sometimes I’m Meritorious Mike. I really like it when I am.
Here’s how I become Meritorious Mike.
  1. I’ve got to wake up. But that’s not enough.
  2. Once awake, I’ve got to do some work to become Mindful Mike. It’s not hard, but it’s not a habit. I need to build the habit.
  3. Being Mindful is necessary, but not sufficient to being Meritorious. Once I’m mindful, I’ve got to do the work. Mindful to meritorious his hard. But I’ve done it. I’m getting better at it.
Some people might be Effortlessly Mindful and even Effortlessly Meritorious, but not me.
For me, it takes work.
You’ve got to set goals, Jordan Peterson says. Here’s a post by a guy who has done an excellent job of distilling some of Peterson’s ideas. It’s worth stopping and reading.
Here’s my favorite quote, from Peterson’s TED talk:
You have to have an aim in order to do something. If you actually knew what success was, you would want to grasp it. You are an aiming creature. You have an aim; it sets up a world around you. It organizes your emotions and perceptions. What you see and you don’t see. The day manifests itself as a set of challenges; if you solve them properly, you are progressing to your aim. You can live in the day. That makes every moment of every day meaningful. That will sustain you in your life.
My aim is to become Maximum Mike, but Mindful Mike and Meritorious Mike are achievable goals that are on the path to Maximality.
It takes work. It takes practice. It takes having an ideal and a goal.
Blogging helps me. I hope it helps you.

References

Here’s some earlier stuff I’ve written about AutoMike and MikeSim.
Written with the help of
StackEdit, Grammarly, Markdown Here, Blogger, and Google voice typing on Android and Chromebook, plus other stuff.
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