Complacency vs. Exceptionalism

No one aspires to be complacent. We all want to be exceptional. But we’re creatures of habit, structure and routine and those attributes inevitably pull us into behavior patterns of maintaining the status quo. When you’re behaving for the status quo, you’ve already succumbed to complacency.

We’ve all experienced the downsides of complacency – those periods when our personal growth, professional vigor and even our relationships stagnate. At our worst, we begin to take things for granted and convince ourselves that our comfortable status quo is the “new normal” and that no further effort is required from us in order to maintain that threshold. We can dwell in this zone for an alarming period of time and we’re often not even aware of our complacent confinement.

I’ve come up with a phrase to help me avoid the near-gravitational pull of this phenomenon:

“Today’s status quo is tomorrow’s complacent benchmark of someone who lost.”

This single phrase empowers me to make an intentional, daily choice to reject the complacency of the status quo. It motivates me to push my vision and expectations to a higher plane, which in turns fuels my commitment and desire to behave in way that will create those fulfilling results.

How do you manage complacency on your march towards exceptionalism?