I often talk to my boys about not benchmarking their actions against what others are doing.

Roman's goal is to play collegiate basketball and continue his career overseas.
Leo’s goal is to play collegiate soccer and also continue his career overseas.
Silas is too young to have a serious goal, but he’s going to get the same advice as his older brothers when he discovers what he wants to do.

My advice to Roman and Leo is that they have to be abnormal in their habits, behaviors, and mindset to achieve their goals. I still want them to have fun as teenagers, but they cannot do all the things their peers who don’t have as ambitious goals do. And they have to do things their peers don’t do.

Living like the “average” teenager won't help them achieve their goals.

And just like living like the “average” teenager won’t help my boys reach their goals, living like the “average” adult most likely won’t help you reach your goals--or most importantly, live your Authentic Life.

Thanks to some help from ChatGPT (with sources cited in the results), I have a few data points to share about “average” in America:

• Only 44% of adults say they are very satisfied with their personal life--meaning 56% are not very satisfied.
• 29% of adults say they’ve been diagnosed with depression.
• 40% of adults are obese, as measured by a BMI (body mass index) of 30 or higher, and over 70% have a BMI of 25 or higher.
• 2/3rds of Americans take prescription medicine. There is some blessing in this number--people are able to live longer and healthier lives because of advances in medicine, but 2/3rds seems very high.
• The median U.S. household net worth is $192,900.
• 54% have no emergency fund savings or not enough to cover the three months of expenses that is often considered to be the rule of thumb for savings--the median emergency fund savings is $600.
• The U.S. has one of the highest suicide rates among wealthy countries.
• 1 in 3 married adults has gone through a divorce--not quite the often quoted 50% of all marriages end in divorce, but not too far off.

I don’t share these data points from a place of judgment. I know that many people find their Selves in one of these situations for reasons beyond their control or because they have been given misinformation they’ve acted on for years.

If we look at the behaviors of “average”, it’s not so surprising that we see the data points above:

• The median number of books read each year is 4.
• Americans watch about 3 hours and 20 minutes of TV.
• Total screen time averages 7 hours a day — this is slightly skewed by work-related screen time, but it’s still very high.
• Americans spend 2 hours and 24 minutes on social media.
• Less than half of American adults meet the federal guidelines for aerobic activity: 30 minutes of moderate activity a day, 5 days per week.
• Only 44% of Americans say they practice internal reflection or centering a few times each month.

Yes, there are circumstances, barriers, and reasons beyond many people’s control that lead to these behaviors becoming the norm. However, many people actively choose to go along with what everyone else is doing. They fall back on the comfort of knowing that everyone else is doing or feeling the same; they’ve just accepted that’s just the way things are.

And society has told us it’s ok to accept average.

Our role is not to judge whether “average” is right for anyone else, but to determine whether the Authentic Life we are pursuing is found in the averages.

My guess is yours is not.

See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,

JC