How to Be the Best Mediocre You

"If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.”              —Anonymous

If you desire to have a high-impact organization with results beyond your current experience, then you are going to need to embrace one thing: change!              Without change, things stay the same, results remain mediocre, and organizations become stagnant.       

Almost everyone likes the idea of change, yet embracing it is a different story. We do the things we do because of what we’ve been taught. Our behavior is rooted in how we’ve been raised; the culture we were brought up in has contributed to patterns we’ve made our own over the years. We view the world around us through a paradigm established by these collective factors, which have created a limitation, an invisible barrier, or a ceiling that keeps us small. 

Yet we were created for something else: greatness!

The creative power of God Himself lives on the inside of each and every one of us. It has the potential to infuse us with divine inspiration and a vision born from His heart. Yet so much of what we do is the result of a paradigm that limits us to mediocre results at best. Hence, we go on a quest to find resources that will help us become better, while not realizing that the answer to our problem can never be solved by a resource itself.    

You see, there are two types of resources in this world: First, there is the kind that will enable us to become the best mediocre us we can possibly become. These tools are designed to serve and strengthen the status quo. They are created to optimize our current experience within our existing paradigm—intentionally created to keep change marginal, and confine it within an limited leadership model we’ve been handed by those who went before us.   

This first kind of resource has a two-fold effect:

(1) It makes us forget that God is actually bigger than our limited models.

(2) It causes us to believe that the results we are experiencing now are somehow acceptable.    

A resource like this forces you into a paradigm that doesn’t fit your unique gifting—a paradigm designed for someone else.

Resources like this are often championed using terminology like:         

• Tested

• Established

• Proven

• Leading

• Widely Accepted

• Easy

• Simple

• Accredited


Now, if you’re looking for something that will help you excel at mediocrity, then that’s the type of resource you want! However, if mediocrity isn’t what you desire, then I invite you to look at the second resource. It’s a different type. It isn’t the type you can buy off a shelf, a book table, or a website. You can’t implement it when you’re told to “make the best of what we’ve got!” It’s far bigger than that.       

In fact, it’s not a tangible resource at all. It’s a movement! I pray that AVAIL will be the type of resource that will take you beyond what you can dream or imagine. That it will connect you to people and resources that will allow your organization to become an authentic expression of the vision God has for your life.

The terminology that surrounds a movement like this is:           

• New

• Innovative

• Pioneer

• First

• Breakthrough

• Controversial

• Untested

• Change


AVAIL is designed to cause you to think bigger, beyond your existing leadership paradigms. In fact, you’ll find that this movement shatters current paradigms and inevitably offends the status quo. Others will come to see that you aren’t content with the status quo, but want to rise up and make a true, lasting impact for those you serve.

Joining a movement like this is risky: It may cause you to leave the comfort of the well-established templates you’ve become accustomed to over the years. Yet the rewards far outweigh the risks. I don’t know about you, but I have no desire to become the best mediocre me! Instead, at the risk of losing everything that is “good” in my organization, I will choose the possibility of greatness every time!

This article was written by Martijn van Tilborgh

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Martijn van Tilborgh is the co-founder of Kidmin Nation, owner of Four Rivers Media and Kudu Publishing, and is a renowned author, speaker, and leader in the marketing and communications space. books as handbooks worldwide in leadership development.