You Cannot Live an Extraordinary Life by Making Ordinary Choices

Do you want to have an ordinary life? Or do you want to life a life outside of “ordinary?”

Ordinary is by the book.

Ordinary is going with the flow.

Ordinary is waiting for the right time to do something, to speak up, to stand out.

Ordinary is a choice.

Or you can choose to be extraordinary, to be heroic.

Once upon a time, the world was dominated by two powerful forces. These allies had once come together to defeat common enemies, but once the realities and threats of those great wars dissipated, the two forces locked themselves in a cold, intense war of competition and fear. Each force sought to prove it was more innovative, more powerful, and ultimately, stronger than the other. In the middle of the night, a wall was built separating the two forces. As the years went by, successive walls of increasing security and strength were built to continue to divide and separate.

After twenty-six years, the ruler of one of the powerful forces stood at the wall’s gate and demanded that the other ruler tear down the wall. The sun set, yet the wall remained. A week passed, a month passed, a year passed. And yet the wall remained. Two years later, rumors began circulating that the gates in the wall would open. For the first time in decades, people could pass through the wall without restriction. Crowds gathered at the gates, but they did not know that the guards had been under order to expel, imprison, or even kill anyone who attempted to pass through the gates. One by one, ordinary people demanded to pass through without penalty and without restriction. As the demands grew louder and more numerous, the guards acquiesced, and people passed freely from one side of the wall to the other.

The point of the story is that one loud and powerful voice, not even that of former President Ronald Reagan—the Great Communicator—could bring down the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall came down because ordinary people chose to do something extraordinary. On November 9, 1989, they put their freedom and their lives on the line and attempted to pass through the gates, a movement that began with just one nameless person who demanded to pass through. Change was not the result of a presidential proclamation, but rather a bold action by an ordinary person.

We often identify heroes by the positions they hold, from father or mother to civil rights activist, from firefighter to search and rescue volunteers, but it is the positions we take when we stand for something meaningful that make us heroes. When we stand for those things, when we stand for our values, we are heroes.

The choices we make each and every day are the positions we stand for.

The world is not changed by extraordinary people. The world is changed by ordinary people who choose not to accept the status quo. The world is changed by ordinary people who choose to do something out of the ordinary. The world is changed by ordinary people who do something extraordinary.

All of us want to be good people, but our desire and our intentions are not enough. In 2012, Bronnie Ware published “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying,” in which she recorded the most common regrets that her dying patients shared with her as their nurse. The most common of all? “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

In other words, the most powerful regret most people have is that they did not cross the threshold, choosing to live a life of comfort and ease, rather than a life of purpose and peace.

You cannot live an extraordinary life by making ordinary choices.

I’m ready to help and support you. Let’s find a time to talk about your next adventure.

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Author's note: Parts of this post originally appeared in Building up without tearing down: How to cultivate heroic leadership in you and your organization, which was released Summer 2018.