7 Ways to Live a Mediocre Life!

Cyriel Kortleven
Creative Enlightenment
2 min readApr 2, 2021
My own drawing (Cyriel Kortleven)

A lot of people are afraid of reaching their full potential. It’s indeed a path where you have to dare to dream big, make difficult choices, commit, be persistent and accept failure in order to learn and continue. For those people who love the status quo, here are some tips to live a mediocre life.

1. Keep your dreams very realistic. Make sure that SMART actions (specific, measurable, assignable, realistic and time-related) are your mantra. Don’t even think about doing something bigger than you can imagine. Don’t even bother to imagine because that only leads to despair and disillusionment.

2. Listen to all the advice of others. Certainly, to the people who shout loudest and have never tried it themselves. It’s absolutely true when they proclaim that ‘it won’t work anyway’. They are 100% correct in saying that if you never try to achieve your idea.

3. Do normal — no crazy stuff. The world is already full of crazy people who want to do impossible things. Most of them won’t achieve their goals anyway. Okay, a few of them will. But those are the exceptions. If you stay normal and behave within the ‘normal’ limits, you will be fine. Hopefully.

4. Be complacent. Do you know about the risks of a new idea? There are always risks — certainly in our perception. The status quo is not a bad place. Nothing changes. You do the same as the day before. No surprises. It can be a bit boring … okay- very boring but hey, you can’t have everything in life.

5. Laziness just has a bad name. It’s not that bad to be lazy. Always choose the easiest way to achieve a goal. Don’t take an extra step or put in some extra effort. It requires energy. Okay, you might miss out on some opportunities, but who said life is about ‘having it all’?

6. Always look at the world from your point of view. Stay at home as much as possible because the world is a dangerous place. In a different country, they have a different culture and they behave very strangely. Don’t go there because you might broaden your view and that might complicate your life. Having a small world view is easier.

7. Don’t commit yourself. Perseverance is hard work — it costs time, money and energy to get somewhere. Spend a lot of time creating lots of disclaimers to make sure that they can never blame you for something. It’s easier to stay where you are. Just hope that something extraordinary will happen, or maybe you get lucky.

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Cyriel Kortleven
Creative Enlightenment

Global speaker on the Change Mindset #Simplifier #Interaction #GoestheExtraMile