Being Cool Versus Being Great
There is a certain amount of Zen involved in being cool. It seems to me that you only achieve being cool when you're not trying to be cool. If you actually try to be cool, you will certainly lose it and not be cool at all. Being cool is being comfortable with yourself and being confident in yourself. It is not doing what everyone else is doing, but doing what needs to be done. Coolness may take awhile to achieve, or you may achieve it quickly.
Greatness is not the same as coolness.
Being great requires effort. It requires hard work. Being great is recognizing your natural talents and developing them to their fullest. Some people are born with enormous talent, but without work, what do they achieve? Do they discover what they are capable of without effort?
Great athletes recognize their talent and then hone it to achieve its fullest potential. The competition helps to focus them on achieving more than what they would achieve without it.
I was once involved in a psychology experiment. One group of individuals were given a complex task and told that they had all of the time in the world to take a look at it before attempting the task. I was in that group. I didn't have to exert effort and so I didn't. The other group was placed under time constraints (ie, under pressure) to look at the task and then attempt it. Invariably, the pressured group accomplished more.
At my work, there is a certain saying about being in one's comfort zone. This is considered a bad thing, because it means that you aren't pushing yourself.
I found myself not very challenged when attending public school. Things came very easy to me and I did what was necessary to get the grades that I needed. When I arrived in college, I found myself in shock. Suddenly I wasn't a part of the elite few, but I was a part of a talented many. I had to learn to work hard.
It's easy to imagine that if you push yourself hard doing what you love to do, then you may find out that you don't really love it or that you're really not that good at it. I have pushed myself hard at doing what I enjoy and I found out that I still enjoyed it. There will be risks in everything that you do--you sometimes have to take a chance.
There are some people that confuse coolness with greatness. You can achieve greatness and be cool. Just being cool doesn't make you great, though.
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