Normal vs Optimal

You can tell a lot about a person by the choice of words they use when expressing themselves, as those words are reflective of a type of mile-marker within their consciousness. So since the devil is always in the details, I want to unpack the word “normal” to highlight some perspectives that are often overlooked, as once you see them it’s kind of hard to unsee them.

The word “normal” is one that gets applied as indiscriminately as the word “friend” or “love.” And anything that gets used so loosely, and frequently, is something that can become a potential liability if you let it. For example, normal is usually used as a synonym for customary. But just because customary refers to a numerical average of an accepted belief, it doesn’t mean that that custom should be adopted by everyone everywhere. So again, the reason why I think it’s important to unpack this word [normal] is because of how much of an important role it plays in decision making. That said, when we shift our focus from normal to optimal, we’re forced to pit new information against old beliefs, which may be harder for some to reconcile than others. But the part about normal that I think is the most interesting is that it’ll never ask hard questions, or require any creativity or accountability, as it’s like a lease without the option to buy. Meaning that people tend to take more responsibility for the care and maintenance of things they own as opposed to the things that they’re simply renting. And in the case of musical ideas, a person can never be held fully accountable for coming up with a bad idea if it was never really theirs in the first place.

Story time…

As I often mention, a large part of how I found my musical voice was through the pursuit of understanding how drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts found his. And the point in which I had my ah-ha moment for why I should lean into developing my own concept was when I realized that I had been using Jeff’s drumming as a crutch. Meaning that for all those years of trying to play just like him, I was really just trying to side-step the responsibility of ever having to bear the full weight of owning my own ideas, which at the time had yet to be fully scrutinized by the market, so to speak. In short, the normative effect that Jeff created on Jazz drumming is one that caused so many of us to feel like we needed to learn how to emulate him just so we could stay relevant/normal. But again, this way of thinking is a type of herd mentality which can stifle the rate at which new ideas are developed.

At the end of the day, normal will never inspire us to grow past our current station like optimal can. However, because many will still prefer the devils they can see as opposed to the ones they can’t, means that they’ll continue to resist the unknowns of this optimal world until they can muster up the intestinal fortitude needed to go the distance. So if you’re someone who sees the value in optimizing the time you have left on this earth to make your story as epic as possible, then I think that one of the most organic ways to develop the muscle needed to embrace the unknowns of your future is to start by applying this concept to your body. It’s like they say, how you do anything is how you do everything. And there’s nothing you “do” more often than exist in your body. So when you create a habit of striving for optimal health as opposed to settling for the numerical averages of what’s considered as normal, then what you’ll lean into is the excitement of meeting a version of yourself you have yet to meet. And since the idea of living an authentic life is one where everything we embrace on the outside is reflective of what we’re already embracing on the inside, it only makes sense that a person would think to apply the same or similar strategies towards improving the optics of their outer world that have already proven to be of value towards their inner world.

Suggested Takeaways…

a) When we optimize our “being” for greatness, the quality of our “doing” will surely follow.

b) Normal isn’t reflective of quality as much as it’s reflective of a law of averages.

c) The best laboratory for testing a theory about the human condition is through the human body, as if the results are favorable you’ll just have to find a way to recreate the experiment in every other area of your life.