Born on Third Base

No doubt. A lot of people are born with caring families and comforts and plenty of valuable direction at an early age. Others, with far less.

So what?

People who go through life worrying that the guy or gal on third, that was born there and doesn’t know it, are the same people not concerned sufficiently with their own lead-off towards second. Successful people don’t worry about other people’s advantages – they focus on how to craft their own. They don’t worry about where they were born, they worry about where they want to live.

This seemingly benign statement is pregnant with negativity. If they don’t realize their “privilege” or they incorrectly think their station in life was earned, who are you to point it out or to care? Their place has no impact on your own success and to focus on it for more than an instant is to waste the gift. To waste the knowledge that you’re capable of having whatever you want in life, assuming you want it enough.

That last part is the most difficult to grasp. That you have to want it enough to do something different than what you did before, different from everyone else around you. The fact is most people DON’T want things that bad to stop doing what they’ve always done. A point of comfort is achieved and there isn’t enough magnetic push or pull to get people to do the work necessary to accomplish great success.

So, as we’re generally comfortable enough, and dissatisfied that this other person has a better: car/income/family life/office/reputation/etc… the story we’re tempted to tell ourselves is that they didn’t earn it. That it was purely luck, and they should come down a peg from all of their high horses and silver spoons. But what good does any of it do? Envy, jealousy, feelings of superiority – all evils for a reason. Not because of what they do to others, but for how they corrode us and rust over our own initiative.