I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – Too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! They’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June —
To an admiring Bog!

Emily Dickinson

When you’re getting updates from hundreds of people on Facebook and Twitter and other social media sites, it’s easy to start feeling a bit inadequate.  Everyday it seems like one or more of your friends has launched a product, found a job, climbed Kilimanjaro, or done some other amazing thing you…haven’t.

So you start frantically trying to network, get your act together, and knock things off your bucket list.  You wonder if you aren’t dreaming big enough or being bold enough.  The more you try to “fix” the problem, the harder you are on yourself and the the more you start to feel like a Nobody.

So maybe you haven’t made it into the Guinness Book of World Records yet.  Maybe your achievements haven’t even made it into your parent’s Christmas letter.  Take heart.  Some of the most delightful people on Earth have been Nobodies too (like Emily Dickinson–well, at least for a while).

As I was coming down off the high from attending Chris Guillebeau’s Unconventional Book Tour in Birmingham, Alabama, I knew I needed something to keep me awake on the road.  So I turned to a local classic rock station and let my mind wander ahead of me.

Granted, it was still swimming with all the unconventional ideas Chris’ session had inspired.  But when The Rolling Stones came on, I couldn’t help but think, these guys are geniuses.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins encouraged us to not just be better, but to be great.  He told us exactly what we needed to do to leap ahead of our competition, although simply delineating the process into steps doesn’t mean it’s easy to accomplish.  Good is the enemy of great, he counseled.  Now Scott Young has sounded another kind of warning: great may be the enemy of a good life.