Why You Should Melt Your Wax Wings: The Paradox of Aiming High
Dedication takes more than just planning. In this article, learn how to get extreme motivation by compounding it with the Paradox of Aiming High.
There are countless reasons why we fail in our goals. One of the biggest reasons is we are aiming too low.
Despite you wanting to get after your wildest ambitions, sometimes the motivation isn't enough.
Many people spend years and even their whole life never mustering the courage to make their creative dreams become reality. They end up living lives they never intended and scratch their heads as to how they’ve been working the same soul-crushing job for 15 years.
This is an inauthentic life that threatens your individuality.
It’s a scary place to be. I know because I’ve been there.
But once I understood what got me out of staring at a noose for 15 years, it was much EASIER to get the ball rolling and take on a more authentic lifestyle that was in-tune with my creative ambitions.
What a lack of motivation can costs you
After college (and while at grad school), I found my little office to be the slaughterhouse of my creative dreams.
Each day it would look at me with those adorable little cow eyes as if to ask, “Will you let me out today?”
But each day I had to give it the guillotine and grind it into patties so others can benefit off it’s destruction.
I make jokes about it but frankly, it was terrible. It’s as if staring down a barrel of a gun knowing the best parts of you will die with you – never again being released into the world so it can keep bettering the lives of others. If you were to die at that moment, it would be a tragic thing.
In this video, I’m going to share with you what go me off my ass and gave me insurmountable motivation to live an individualized path ripe with creative opportunities.
What is the Paradox of Aiming High?
It’s risky “settling” for a default lifestyle you’re not in love with. It kills more than your lust for life.
It threatens who you were meant to become – the uniquely gifted individual who lives in a world that doesn’t get to see their gifts unfold.
Mustering motivation isn’t complex. It’s rather technical. One of the strongest tools out there is the Paradox of Aiming High.
The Paradox of Aiming High – the counterintuitive approach to achieving your ideal creative lifestyle by aiming higher than any mediocrity (where it’s considered “easier” to achieve your goals)
What can this method do?
In using this method, I’ve achieved many great creative things I otherwise would not have be able to complete (let alone start):
- Acted in several movies, commercials and modeling gigs
- Got accepted into the Peace Corps (24% acceptance rate)
- Passed FAA pilot’s exam 8pts higher than the national average
- Wrote and published a book in 27 (highly motivated) days
I could not have done any of this without this counterintuitive concept. Once you learn the power of the Paradox of Aiming High, you’ll be able to achieve your creative muses much easier and faster!
Plus, every day feels f*cking good again! It’s no longer a chore to wake up and go to “work”.
Achievement is all about self-actualization
Now, I’ve tasked myself with solving people’s problems regarding personal achievement and self-actualization.
Self-actualization is the expression of your unique gifts and intuition and watching them be productively played and practiced with.
This is a transition from internal to external, which is often complicated with clashing societal expectations, psychological misunderstanding and a lack of self-reliance in foreign environments.
What this means is that any problem you have with your own personal achievement or social life has to do with your self-understanding.
“There are no personal achievement problems. Rather, there are problems with self-understanding that bleed into personal achievement.”
Self-actualization is all about self-transparency
Self-understanding can be more accurately called self-transparency.
Self-transparency is the graceful practice of having a coherent acuteness to your thoughts, intentions, emotions and most IMPORTANTLY, intuition.
Intuition is the immediate seizing of what is real.
Prosperity in any field you choose comes down to that self-transparency.
It also comes down to understanding the “reasonable” world in which we inhabit – the one with traditions, expectations and perpetuating criticisms. But the thing is, progress and self-formulation often reside in the “unreasonableness”.
Progress relies in the “unreasonableness”
It was once unreasonable to live outside of caves, have women vote or look to the stars as the explanation of the cosmos.
Often, “unreasonable” things are just new, not nonsensical.
What if I told you, it is easier to make $10,000 than $100? It all comes from what we convince ourselves as “reasonable”.
In order to get what you really crave deep inside; you have to break the glass ceiling of your perceptions of what’s “realistic”. And yes, rewriting our ambitions is much like demolition.
Using the Paradox of Aiming High
Start isolating your "whys"
Being able to achieve the ambitious more easily than the mediocre has to do with our drivers, which is found in our our Limbic System. This part of the brain has to do with motivation, impulse and our “whys”.
- Why are we doing this?
- Why go for gold?
- Why test your metal and make your mark in the world?
- Why find your truer self?
The benefit
The more authentic and succulent the why, the more energy you have to command your future.
When you think of the BIG achievement, your mind starts to salivate. It starts to become dilated and engaged!
It is because of the intense drivers can we infuse adrenaline with action to achieve our “unreasonable”. This needs to happen so we can muster the endurance to overcome the many problems that will get in your way.
This is a technical process – If we bait our goals with reasonable payouts, it’ll be met with normal amounts of effort. We then become less driven to overcome what is necessary to achieve them.
Use your "whys" to scare yourself
To make this system effective, our drivers and goals need to be out-of-this-world bad-shit crazy. I mean, these goals need to scare you.
This means clear visions and powerful “whys” are everything.
So, where to start?
Well, definitely not where everyone else is keeping their gaze.
So I say…
Aim higher than anything you see around you. Believe you can achieve the wild. Walk around and put yourself in this fantasy world where you have the things and opportunities you’ve always wanted.
Want to make a hit-movie series? Imagine yourself as you’ve already achieved it and think about all the small changes it would bring to your day-to-day life.
Get the guided blueprint for honing your creative focus and discover your next biggest achievement.
With this free eCourse, you’ll be starting on your creative future today.
This is my coffeehouse wager to you...
So, this is my desire for you:
Aim for anything higher than you previously imagined for yourself. Melt those wax wings and let ambition pierce every bit of you. Chose only the “whys” that matter to you. Don’t water it down.
Otherwise, what’s the f*cking point of reaching for it in the first place?
I’ll see you soon,
Mike T. Kelly
Editor of Prosperity
Mike Kelly
Editor of Prosperity
Ex-structural engineer gone expat polyglot. Through his speaking events, published writings and online blog, he strives to influence millions of travelers to be their best selves while experiencing novelty overseas or at home. His desire for adventure travel is rivaled by his love for motorcycles, airplanes and family. Michael graduated from Gonzaga University with studies in civil engineering and philosophy. For his 29th birthday, he moved to Africa where he is experiencing his next transformative experience.
The Paradox of Aiming High FAQ
What is the meaning of aiming high?
The phrase "aiming high" means strive beyond your previous standards in life. Aiming high is looking around to see where everyone else is setting their goal, but you decide to reach higher than that. The Paradox of Aiming High tells us aiming higher than everyone else means there is less competition there, and thusly, it is easier to succeed.
Why do we have to aim high?
Aiming high has numerous benefits for any person trying to excel in life. For example, if you aimed only for the bare minimum, you may not get it. But if you aim a few tiers above your objective, you are more certain to achieve it and possibly even more. Aiming high is the reason why scientists and activists have progressed society so far. Imagine if equal rights activists only aimed for smaller rights, rather than desegregated facilities and voting rights.
How can I aim high in life?
The best way to aim high in life is to leverage all the accompanying emotions and conditions that arise from aiming high. Even recognizing emotions such as excitement, adrenaline and patience create a more capable individual. As well, competition is highest in the mediocre. Form the habit of aiming higher than everyone else you see around you and there will be less competition for those who seek higher success.
Is it better to aim high and miss?
Absolutely. Expat author and entrepreneur Mike T. Kelly says it's better to aim high and miss every single time. Imagine the slower progression of technology, science and living quality if scientists and activists only reached for the minimum. Plus, missing or failing teaches the achiever valuable lessons compared to those who never even tried.