What it takes to be a truly exceptional person.

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Truly exceptional people must somehow resolve a conflict between two central tenants:

The first is the acknowledgement that it takes a delusional person to believe they are truly exceptional. For, you see, the chance of being so exceptional is (let’s say) 0.000001%. That’s one-in-a-million odds. So, to believe that you are that exception is tantamount to playing away your life savings at the slot machines. The second tenant is the firmly held belief that, despite knowing that it is delusional, that you *are* the exception. A truly exceptional person does not care if they are mired in delusion. Truly exceptional people, despite knowing it is delusional, choose to believe that they are the one in a million (It sure beats the alternative of accepting that you are no exception).

Thus, the creation of the exceptional individual is never twice the same. It can be an entirely bottom-up process whereby a man, with no innate gift to speak of, must fight tooth and nail to prove his worth to society. He eventually lives up to his own self-image, and in the process, works himself into rarified air in terms of becoming exceedingly good at something. OR, it can be completely top-down process, whereby a person possesses boundless natural gifts (ahem, LeBron James) which prove themselves to be exceedingly rare, and he need only maintain and hone these gifts, in order not to lose them.

As you’d imagine, the more usual case is somewhere in between the bottom-up and top-down processes, whereby a person has a certain amount of given talents, and in the end, what takes a man from the land of pluripotentiality to the realm of accomplished legends is one thing alone: force of will and the courage to wrestle the ghost of your future self.

This is a concept many greats have touched upon, as they have no doubt wrestled with their own potentials.

Frank Herbert dedicated his masterpiece Dune to “the people whose labors go beyond ideas into the realm of ‘real materials,’” and indeed the very basis for his infamous Bene Gesserit litany against fear:

“I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.” — Frank Herbert “U ntil you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.” — C.S. Lewis

“O nly one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the “treasure hard to attain”. He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby has gained himself.” — Carl Jung

I have this… working hypothesis, it goes something like this:

The more vast is your potential, the more vast becomes your fear of fulfulling it.

Let that frame the way you see your anxiety next time you feel insufficient or reticent about your general competency.

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FAREWELL EXTANT HOMO

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