🔥Welcome to Volume #00120!🔥
I’m Christian Champ. This is ☯️The Middle Way Newsletter ☯️. It is a place where I write, explore, share, and invite you along for the journey.
If you enjoy the newsletter, please share it with your friends.
🎯 Why We Want To Get Good Enough At Enough Things🎯
It stops us in our tracks.
Our eyes bulge, and excitement rushes in.
Greatness is a powerful thing to witness.
But most of us won’t ever experience it up close.
Unless your name is Brady, Jordan, Serena, LeBron, or Tiger, you likely won’t come near it.
And that’s okay.
The real game?
Being good enough at enough things.
When We're Young, We Want It All
We want to be the MVP.
We want to make the all-star team.
We want to start, dominate, and get recruited.
Then we want the dream job.
The fast-track.
The startup.
The exit.
The F-you money.
The CEO seat.
Here’s the twist:
All of that is doable. But it doesn’t require greatness.
My Story: The Almosts
I made the all-star teams…but barely played.
I made the varsity basketball team as a sophomore…but spent more time on the bench than on the floor.
I graduated near the top of my class…but never the top.
I was a solid analyst…but not the best.
I was a good investor…but equally forgettable.
I was good…but not great.
We’re constantly shown the best of the best.
And it messes with our heads.
Flip open Instagram, and someone younger, faster, or better is already ahead of us.
But This Is Normal
In a single-elimination tournament of 64, only one wins.
There’s one national champion.
One CEO.
One GOAT.
The odds of being the one?
Low.
But what are the odds of building something amazing by stacking skills?
Way better.
The Goal Isn’t Greatness. It’s OUR Greatest.
This is Kevin Kelly’s idea: BE THE ONLY.
We don’t need to be the best. We just need to be the only. The only person who can do what we do, thanks to our unique talent stack.
We get there not by being elite at one thing, but by getting good enough at enough things.
Our mixture is the only flavor we offer.
Stack Skills Until It All Clicks
Start stacking.
Keep adding.
Even if you don’t know how it all fits yet.
Eventually, it does.
And some meta-skills are always worth adding—no matter who you are or what you aim to become:
🧰 Talent Stack Ideas
Communication & Influence
Writing
Storytelling
Persuading
Selling
Marketing
Prompting
Visioning
Planning
Habits
Teaching & Leadership
Coaching
Teaching
Mapping
Parenting
Mentoring
Guiding
Creative & Strategic
Designing
Investing
Building
Where to Build Our Stack
Side projects
Real-world experiments
Courses
Books
Podcasts
Conversations
Doing the thing
We don’t need to be great.
We just need to be good enough at enough things.
The greatness and the onlyness comes from how it stacks together.
**Scott Adams introduces the talent stack idea in this video
🧠Things to Think About🧠
Find Your People by Jessica Livingston
College graduation season means coming across inspiring commencement speeches. This one by Jessica Livingston, one of the founders of Y Combinator, is great.
The speech is for folks who wish they had ambitious plans, which is all of us at different periods of our lives.
You fall into three groups. Some of you already have all kinds of ambitious plans. You're already admitted to med school for the fall, or whatever. Others of you have no ambitious plans and no desire to have any. You just want to have a happy life, and that's cool. But in the middle, there's a group who wish they had ambitious plans, but don't. This speech is for you. I'm going to tell you how to get ambitious plans.
Jessica got mediocre grades, but it didn’t matter. Her first idea is one we can all use whenever, and that is reinventing ourselves. We can tell any story we want. There is always a lesson we can learn and use it to do things differently.
So I'm going to tell you about a trick you can pull right here at the point where the train tracks end. You can reinvent yourself. I wish I’d known I could do that. I was lazy in college and got bad grades. But the real problem was that I believed them: I believed that mediocre grades meant I was a mediocre person. And that stuck with me for years. I'm sure most of you have done better in school than I did, but maybe there are some of you who are feeling a little unsure of yourself. But here's the thing: you don't have to tell people that. They don't know. So if you want to, you can just decide to shift gears at this point, and no one's going to tell you you can't. You can just decide to be more curious, or more responsible, or more energetic, and no one's going to go look up your college grades and say, "Hey, wait a minute, this person's supposed to be a slacker.
Once we tell a different story (or maybe it’s the same story because it already serves us) we find people to get ideas.
My favorite trick is people. Talk to people. Get introduced to new people. Find the people that you think are interesting, and then ask what they're working on. And if you find yourself working at a place where you don't like the people, get out.
Get good at rejection. This is why I love BJJ: when you learn to get tapped every single class (unless you need to find new training partners). When we fail, we keep going.
Which leads me to my final point about getting ambitious plans: you have to be immune to rejection. People are going to dismiss you at first. If that's enough to stop you, you're doomed. So you have to learn to ignore it. And that's harder than it sounds—social pressure is so powerful. But everyone who does ambitious things has to learn how to resist it.
Whenever we need to course-correct, we go out and find interesting people to show us the way. That is how she ended up helping to found Y-Combinator.
So let me remind you what I've told you: you've been able to go through life so far without steering much. If you want to, you can become more ambitious now, but to do that you have to start steering. You can't just drift. There’re a huge number of options, and you have to actively figure out which is the best for you. And the best way to do that is people. Find the interesting people.
🎧Things to Listen, See, and Watch 🎧
Todd Roses offers up thoughts about how collective illusions create a Truman Show effect. The media of today plays into pushing us to say things we don’t believe in, with bad societal and mental health outcomes.
The Danger of Self-Silencing
Most Americans self-silence and misrepresent their views publicly due to social pressure.
This leads to collective illusions where public consensus differs significantly from private beliefs.
Two-thirds of Americans self-silence on important issues because they feel they can't publicly express their beliefs.
This need to belong can lead individuals to misrepresent their views, creating a false public consensus.
Research shows every demographic is outright lying about their views on multiple issues.
Consistent self-silencing has cardiovascular consequences and elevates cortisol levels.
Self-silencing is more prevalent in women and accounts for the gender gap in mental health issues.
Conformity Bias and Social Media
Human brains have a conformity bias triggered by perceptions of group agreement.
Social media amplifies loud minority voices, misleading us about majority beliefs.
Nuances in DEI Opinions
Americans overwhelmingly reject almost every aspect of DEI privately.
This includes college admissions, where even two-thirds of African-Americans oppose affirmative action.
However, Americans still hold a strong commitment to diversity and believe it is good for the country.
The fringes on both sides try to create a binary view, but Americans have more nuanced opinions.
They believe in diversity, a fair shot, and earning success, viewing current DEI practices as antithetical to these values.
Combatting Collective Illusions
Name and understand collective illusions to challenge your assumptions about group beliefs.
Create a safe space by encouraging honest conversation and becoming an ally for differing views.
Connecting Through Curiosity
Genuine curiosity reveals unexpected common ground between very different people.
Culture Shapes Society Deeply
Culture shapes shared values that underpin institutions and politics.
Destroying societal stories and trust is more damaging than dismantling laws.
Speak Up to Build Trust
Have honest conversations by expressing your true views and asking others to share theirs.
This simple act breaks illusions and increases social trust one person at a time.
Trust and Abundance Mindset
Most people are good and trustworthy; lack of trust is unwarranted.
We live in abundance and can grow prosperity and happiness together.
He breaks down this video with Alex Honel in his piece, which is recommended, or you good watch the entire thing.
“You have to try hard if you want to do hard things.” - Alex Honel
💣Words of Wisdom💣
"Putting experience aside for the moment, the fundamental attributes that great leaders have is the ability to convey a message to their followers to take action." (Rose Fass, The LEADERSHIP CONVERSATION - Making Bold Change, One Conversation at a Time)
"There’s a lot of good waiting for you on the other side of tired. Get yourself tired, Andre. That’s where you’re going to know yourself. On the other side of tired." (Andre Agassi, Open)
"We modify the way we speak according to who we're with because we have learned this is the socially appropriate thing to do. And because we are with different people and in different situations all day long, everything we do shifts constantly." (Michael Puett, The Path)
"What you feel tells you nothing about the facts—it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts." (Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant)
Professional success often rests on the same pillars that form the foundation of great comedy improv: Creativity, Communication, and Collaboration." (Kelly Leonard, Tom Yorton, Yes, And)
"The point is not to win and finish the game. The point is to continue to play at higher and higher levels, forever creating" (John Mackey, The Whole Story)
"Working with Jonathan and Dan reinforced what I'd always believed: Start with what you want to achieve, instead of limiting yourself to what's realistic or sustainable." (Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality)
"These interreflecting themes, the prerequisites of creation, are playfulness, love, concentration, practice, skill, using the power of limits, using the power of mistakes, risk, surrender, patience, courage, and trust." (Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play)
"One thing I always loved, though, was reading. I doubt any of my peers in junior high and high school read as many books as I did. I was also absorbed in listening to all kinds of music. As a result, I spent little time studying." (Haruki Murakami, Novelist as a Vocation)
"Keith Lohse and colleagues have shown that when athletes expect that they will have to teach a skill later, they learn the skill more quickly and effectively themselves.” (Rob Gray, Learning to Be an “Ecological” Coach)
"You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself." (Stephen King, On Writing)
"Hire Drivers, Not Passengers, and Get the Wrong People off the Bus" (Frank Slootman, Amp It Up)
"We live so much of our lives pushed forward by these "if only" thoughts, and yet the itch remains. The pursuit of happiness becomes the source of our unhappiness." (Dan Harris, 10% Happier)
🙏Thanks for Reading🙏
What do we want to get good enough at this summer? What talents do we want to add to our talent stack?
Namaste,
Christian
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