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Twitter and Facebook are full of inspirational quotes on a daily basis. Half the time there is no knowing whether they are real or not or even who the hell the person cited with saying them actually was. And sometimes I find them rather sinister.
Now don’t get me wrong. I love an inspiring quote as much as the next person and have a stream of personal favourites all over my Pinterest account.
But.
There is a pushiness to many of them, a sense of “you should be doing better”, a feeling of “why haven’t you changed the world yet?”. A constant nagging that we are missing something vital by living our everyday lives.
And I would like to suggest something radical to you all readers.
You really don’t have to be remarkable if you don’t want to be.
Not everyone can change the world (Jeez how many times does it need changing anyway?), not everyone needs to make a million or feed the starving. Not everyone can leave a legacy (at least not one that will be remembered by people other than close friends and family).
For the world to function it needs ordinary people like you and me, making ordinary money, doing ordinary things. Fixing computers, typing up contracts, waiting tables, righting people’s calf muscles. As Tara Gentile said in her newsletter last week it’s not “about everyone quitting organizational employment to work for themselves”. It’s about finding out what rocks your boat and just enjoying that.
There are people in the world who’s main priority is feeding their children and my inner critic (and unreliable quotes on the internet) keeps telling me I should be changing the world.
Pfffttttt….
It’s OK to be ordinary because in your ordinariness you are extraordinary. We all are, just by being right here in the present moment, by breathing, by seeing, hearing, talking. You’re amazing and you don’t have to chase rainbows or pots of gold for that. You’re very existence on the planet, your unique combination of bone and sinew and DNA spirals, the fact that nobody ever has or ever will have a fingerprint the same as yours…..that right there, that’s your legacy.
You just need to be as content as you can. Smile as often as possible. Keep breathing. Jump up and down once a day. Just that will make you special. And we can only achieve that if we are happy with who we are right now, rather than who we have the potential to become.
My own personal favourite inspirational quote is this one from my dear Oscar Wilde
“Be yourself; everyone else is taken“
So just be.
Doing is very often overrated anyway 
(Oh, and if you’d like a good quote about legacy here is one from my favourite Ancient Greek Tyrant)
We’ll be drawing the winners of the giveaway later today and the results will be up tomorrow morning!
Oh my!! I LOVE this post!
This whole thing is one of those things that I’ve never even considered before, but now you’ve written it like that, so perfectly, it’s suddenly as if I’ve been feeling this exact way the whole time.
YES to being ordinary!
Sigh. Marcy thinks this is a huge part of my current anxiety…that I expect/demand SO MUCH from myself, and then I lose sight of what I already have/am doing. Just enjoy it, she says, and stop thinking about the things you are NOT doing. And then I worry I am giving up on myself and my “bigger” dreams…but then I know she is also right…round and round my little mind goes.
This video was really inspiring to me a couple weeks ago: http://www.youtube.com/user/jacobglass#p/u/3/Gk_ScpFuWmA
Yeah… it’s especially hard when you don’t have anything else going on. No partner or kids, no settled life plans. It makes me want to do or be SOMETHING. I don’t know what.
Or rather, I do. Seems amusing that my idea of what I want to be is about getting out of dodge, immersing myself more fully in yoga and then finding a quiet part of the world to settle down in.
I wonder how it’ll all play out…
What a refreshing post, thank you! You’re right, I was just thinking that the other day. There’s a certain someone who does nothing but post a quote every day on Twitter. I’m sure his intentions are pure, but how unoriginal can you get! Looking too much to other people for inspiration can be debilitating and look at how much we’re discounting ourselves when we do that. You’re right, be yourself. Be the best yourself that you can be. Be original. Everyone else is taken (love it!)