On average, being average gets you nothing more than a paycheck. Yes, paychecks are important to pay the rent, buy groceries and lattes but not much more. You only really get noticed, spoken about and praised if you are brilliant and amaze people, or, if you really mess up.

The Big Lesson:

The two main things people share with others are:
1)    Positive Experiences
If you are brilliant, do amazing work, exceed people’s expectations and are a pleasure to be around, people will talk about you for all the right reasons. You’ll not only be praised – more importantly you’ll be sought out by others that want a similar experience or result. Striving to be the best you can be is the fastest way to advance your brand and will also likely come from working from your strengths and greatest talents.
2)    Bad Experiences
If you are paying attention, and are willing to learn from your mistakes or failure, you’ll work to improve if your boss or customers say you made a mistake or your performance needs to improve. If not, you’ll unfortunately just move from one failure to the next. Obviously, this is not a good way to live life.
People don’t tell others about an average waiter, engineer, doctor, teacher, realtor… They accept what they get and move on, and likely won’t deal with that person again unless they have no other choices. Most of the world moves along day-to-day because the average is maintained. What really gets noticed, and rewarded, is excellence.
Average is everywhere. Select an area where you can become excellent and focus your energy, time and money there to become unique or distinctive to enjoy and reap the benefits of being different.

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected. Steve Jobs