Average People Have More Fun

Last Tuesday I wrote about average almost always being good enough. (Follow this link to read it.)

I want to build on that thought a little bit more today.

With this being the week of “The Masters” I thought I’d take a chapter from my own life to illustrate.

In the mid ’80s I was blessed to pastor in a little town near Augusta, GA where the Masters Tournament is played. As you can imagine, golf was a big deal there and a friend of mine introduced me to the game. Boy was I glad! It combined my joy of hiking with my joy of sports perfectly.

I spent many enjoyable hours playing this wonderful new-to-me game. And being reasonably athletic, I begin to get pretty good at playing the game. You could say that I was even a little bit better than average.

And that is when the train wreak occurred.

The more I played and the better I got the more I began to take the game seriously. Not only did I want to play the game but winning the game became important to me. And then, to compound the pain, in a moment of pure craziness I even thought that perhaps I could become a professional golfer and earn my keep through playing golf.

And that was when golf stopped being fun.

As long as I was about average, golf was fun. The moment I tried to be great at it, the fun stopped and the frustration started.

This is just one example of why average people have more fun at most things.

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I can hear you saying, “Are you advocating being average?!” or “Are you encouraging me to settle for mediocrity?”

And the answer is, “Of course not!”

There are a few important things that require your best world class effort. In those one or two things you need to be at the top of class.

But for the rest of life it’s okay to be…

An average musician, photographer, cook, gardener, golfer, carpenter, interior decorator,…you name it.

Most of the hills God put on this earth were not put here for you to die on or even to climb. Mostly they were put here for you to enjoy.

The fate of the world, your family’s next meal, or your eternal destiny is not riding on whether you climb the hill the fastest or even climb to the top.

Most things are just God’s gift to you and for you.

I say it’s time you and me both start having more fun and leave the frustration and pain to the pros.

The ONE Thing for today