Good is the enemy of great

I’ve been taking my own medicine. I managed my body, got connected socially and began to detach from the mind dribble (as per the last three posts). The result is that within a short month my life in Bangkok has transformed.

My days don’t have a set schedule. At some point I head up the road to the co-working space where I’m a member.

Often I’m not very productive there. I’m easily distracted by others. Many of the co-working members are from France. They tend to stick to their own. To a certain extent I understand it, ease of communication is a big factor in relationships. They have a different way of relating to each other the French. It’s sweet actually. They always acknowledge each other when they come in the morning, with a few words and a handshake or fist pump. The men even kiss the women on both cheeks sometimes. Very European.

I wonder what they think about me. I’m an English speaker, but I dress nice like them and look European. Unfortunately they like to chit chat, which drives me nuts if I’m trying to read or write. I had to say something last week. Since then it’s been better, but the latest challenge is a serial cougher behind me. He coughs and clears his throat every few minutes.

I tried to go late the other night to avoid him, turns out he was there. And it was just me and him in the whole building until 9pm. Of all the people that could have been there it was the one person I was trying to avoid!

If I had the choice I’d have my own private office, but they are exorbitant at this co-working, more than the rent for my condo. So I just put up with it. Sometimes I duck into a meeting room and work from there.

Still I mostly laugh at myself and remember that the occasional annoyances are the worthwhile price we pay for being around others.

I’ve met some great people lately in Bangkok. In meeting them I’ve realised something about life circumstances in general and particularly about people: good is the enemy of great.

Many times in life we fall into a pattern of spending time with a set group of people, or in a certain romantic relationship. We get caught in this familiarity. Often we never step back and actually ask, how good is this person for me? To what extent do I enjoy being with them? Do they support me? Are they generous in spirit? Are they thoughtful towards me?

It might be worth asking is this person OK, good or great? The people that suck, well they are the easy ones to weed out, you do so instantly. It’s the ones that are good that are the real danger. Time with them is good, so why change it?

I suppose it depends on what you believe about life in general. Is life meant to be merely good, or is it meant to be great? I believe it’s meant to be great.

The trouble with good is that we subconsciously keep trying to make it great, when in most cases it never can be. So you keep trying and trying, and in effect you’re filling up a bucket with holes in it. Sooner or later you’ll start to resent that person, because even if you don’t consciously admit it to yourself, somewhere deep you know that life is meant to be great, not just good.

And here’s the worst part, all that time you spent trying to make the good into great, is opportunity lost. You could have spent that time looking for people that are great right from the beginning. Or you could have been improving yourself.

As I go on I tend to see more overlap between great investments and great people. The good longer term stocks tend to be good at almost everything related to their business. The poorer stocks on the other hand often show red flags and as you dig a little deeper you find that many other things are off too. Nobody and no stock is perfect, but it seems that the good qualities are concentrated disproportionately in the few, not the many.

Whether it’s with people or other things in life, we live in a world of unlimited abundance. I think that most of us settle far too easily. The great people in life don’t come around that often, but you can tilt lady luck in your favour by being worthy of the people that you want in your life.

If you want people around who are good listeners, thoughtful, responsive (who needs friends that take days to reply when everyone looks at their phone all day), generous, kind and keep their word, then all you need to do is be that kind of person yourself. Water seeks it’s own level. It’s just a matter of time. And once you embody the qualities that you like in others, don’t feel the need to keep around everyone from your past. They may just be taking up space that could be filled by someone that will be much better for you.

I’m not saying that you need to burn bridges, just stop trying to fill up those old leaky buckets for a while and use that energy elsewhere. You might be surprised at what happens.

A final note, while you can’t change someone else from being good to great, you can make that change in yourself. And that it turns out is the most important thing.