The advantages of accepting being average – 01/09/2024 – Balance

Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (United States) is known for its excellence.

The educational institution is usually highly rated among the main universities in the “Ivy League” — the group made up of eight of the most prestigious universities in the United States. Its students always stand out for their important achievements.

When Andrew Greene arrived at Cornell, he was overcome with great anxiety: he felt he needed to stand out among the rest.

“Ambition is something that is typically ingrained in a lot of people at these higher-level colleges,” says Greene.

“I don’t want to disparage Cornell, which is a place I certainly love, but to say it’s not competitive would also be a half-truth.”

And this expectation of excellence in performance is not restricted to the academic sector.

Greene realized that the pressure for perfection also permeates many of the clubs at Cornell.

He wanted to dedicate himself to one of the great musical traditions of American colleges: a cappella singing, without instruments, using only the human voice.

A cappella music is yet another field that demonstrates Cornell University’s excellence in all sectors.

She was one of the sources of inspiration for the 2012 film Pitch Perfect.

But as much as Greene was excited about music, his excitement didn’t translate into talent.

“The a cappella singing scene at Cornell is competitive,” he says.

“I knew I would never get into any of those a cappella groups. So I started developing the idea of ​​maybe starting my own group.”

Greene created the perfect name for his group: Mediocre Melodies.

He mentioned the idea to his friends and received a crowd of interested people in response.

Greene founded the association, and 30 people signed up.

Its members decided they would convince people to support their middling group by donating all proceeds to local charities.

They created the slogan “bad singers for a good cause”.

But even so, the project faced resistance.

Greene met with an influential person in the a cappella singing world, who scoffed at his idea.

She said they would never raise enough money to pay the costs, nor support charities.

Greene was discouraged.

“I came back and told the group: ‘We’re screwed'”, he recalls.

Why is average a bad word?

“Why do we need to be exceptional to progress?” asks Thomas Curran, professor of psychology and behavioral sciences at the London School of Economics (LSE) and author of the book The Perfection Trap.

Why did “average” become a “bad word”?, insists the professor.

Curran has been studying countless data on college students and perfectionism since 1989. He found a 40% increase in so-called socially prescribed perfectionism.

“Socially prescribed perfectionism makes us stubbornly hypervigilant about our performance relative to other people,” he explains.

We generally don’t consider perfectionism to be a flaw. We think we need it to be successful.

“In fact, looking at the data, you realize that perfectionism has absolutely no correlation with success,” explains the professor.

On the contrary: perfectionism can have several disadvantages.

“Prevention, containment, procrastination,” says Curran.

We may be so afraid of not looking perfect that we end up not trying.

Perfectionism is not “the secret to success we often mistakenly think it is.”

It’s not just a matter of making us inefficient.

“Socially prescribed perfectionism can have profound impacts on our mental health,” says Curran.

Research shows relationships between perfectionism and increased levels of depression, anxiety and burnout.

Constant struggle to feel happy

This resistance to accepting being average, faced by Andrew Greene when forming his a cappella singing group, can be seen throughout the business world.

Bosses often say that they won’t accept “anything less than perfection” from their team or that “only the best will do.”

In theory, this seems like a good thing, but in reality, it ignores the premise that, to improve ourselves, we need to make mistakes.

And if we get too focused on perfection, our brains can lose all sense of fun and creativity.

“If you become obsessed with seeking what you perceive to be perfection, you will create a huge disadvantage for yourself,” says life coach Leonaura Rhodes, originally trained in neuroscience.

According to her, perfectionists will get a huge dose of dopamine when they achieve good results.

But getting those dopamine spikes from a single source makes it difficult to get the same dose from other sources, Rhodes points out.

In other words, the brain will only release dopamine when you reach an exceptional level.

Therefore, as a result, if you want to continue producing this substance and feeling the well-being generated by it, you will always need to continue improving yourself.

“It (perfectionism) robs people of the ability to be present, be happy and feel at peace,” she explains. “It becomes a constant fight.”

Being average maintains brain health

When trying new things, you don’t expect to do well right away.

And this can have positive influences on brain health.

“When we learn something new, our brain has this incredible ability to form neural connections, which is called neuroplasticity,” explains Rhodes.

If we just do the same things every day, we’ll have very little neuroplasticity, and that’s not good for us — especially as we age.

So spending time learning new things and doing what we’re average at is a great investment in your future brain health.

Measure success by well-being, not money

Curran argues that perfectionism is deeply rooted in our economic systems.

Our economy grows in proportion to consumption and, in order to consume, we need to feel that there are things we need.

He states that these sensations are conditioned in us by advertising, “through the feeling that there is a material product or solution for what we think we don’t have.”

To combat this, Curran believes we need to stop measuring success by money.

How about worrying about well-being and happiness? Can we create economies that allow people to be their best, raising their expectations in life?

Curran believes that these points are measures of success as important as GDP (Gross Domestic Product, or the sum of a country’s wealth).

Accept that it is impossible to have control

As individuals, one strategy for dealing with perfectionism proposed by Curran is “radical acceptance.”

“Radical acceptance is really accepting that there are limits to what we can control,” he explains.

Curran uses a sailboat as an analogy.

On days with good wind, you can travel for hours. In others, you are simply floating. And in others, you will try to head in one direction but will be thrown off course.

The important thing, for the teacher, is not the destination, but the journey.

“Travel is about pushing ourselves towards the destination; journey is about having courage, being vulnerable and that’s good,” he explains.

Accepting being average can bring joy

Andrew Greene was brave. He did not give up on his goal of forming an average a cappella singing group, even in the face of people’s resistance.

Determined to make money from his first performance, he became even more motivated to prove to his doubters that he was right.

More than 300 people attended the premiere of Mediocre Melodies.

And when the group performed its first song — Fat Bottom Girls, by the British rock band Queen — the audience’s reaction was rapturous.

Mediocre Melodies quickly became a hit with students at Cornell University.

Maggie Meister is the group’s first female president. The fourth-year student declared that accepting to be an average singer was transformative.

“No one tries to strive for perfection,” she says of the group, “and it’s just this uplifting environment where I really feel like I can be myself.”

Focusing on joy and camaraderie, not perfection, allowed group members to express themselves freely.

They are not limited by socially prescribed perfectionism. They simply want to have fun.

Accepting that we are a little less perfect, a little more average, may just help us live our best lives.

After all, the tragedy in life is not failing. The tragedy is failing to enjoy life.

*Listen (in English) to the episode of the BBC Radio 4 program Sideways, which inspired this report, on the BBC Sounds website.

This report was originally published here.