Post No. 2,767 - How good am I?

As a kid and young adult, I used to race sailing dinghies. Initially I was a good crew, then poor skipper - until other more experienced sailors helped me, and then I was reasonably successful.

Based on those decades, and the sailing I did intermittently until the early 2000s (including skippering a boat to 7^th out of 28 in the Sydney Gay Games - and our team came 3^rdso we got bronze medals for that), my assessment of my sailing ability is: 

• I could win regional and club dinghy championships (and I did);

• I would finish around 10% of the way back in state championships; 

• my ability was around 20% back of the best in national titles (although I never had the back up / set up ashore to realise that); and 

• globally I would rate myself about 30% back from the best. 

To put that another way, around ⅓ of the dinghy sailors in the world are better than me, and I am better than ⅔ - until the end of last century, at any rate (sailing techniques have changed since then, and I would be much further back in the fleet nowadays). 

I also knew what work I would have to do to improve my ability, but I decided to put my energies and times into trying to make the world a better place, and happily let the competitive sailing go. 

Now, one of the word puzzles I do started publishing some statistics recently, and based on that, I suspect it is probably reasonable to suspect that ⅓ of the people who do that puzzle are better than me, and I am better than ⅔ - and, given the amount of writing I have done for work, activism, this blog, and for myself (i.e., - a lot more writing than most people in the world), I would hope to be something like that. 

However, I also know there are people who love words far more than I do, and I am comfortable with the fact that I am nowhere near being best. 

In my former day job, I was acknowledged as being one of the best engineers in my speciality in Australia, and probably as good as most of the best in the world (based on the feedback from my peers in the multinationals I worked in) - and, after nearly half a century of work, I would hope to have good competency. 

But again, others were better. 

In terms of psychic ability, I have been working at developing that since the 1980s, but in fairly specific areas (energy  work, rescue, etc), and that has necessarily been second in my life to family responsibilities over the last quarter century, and behind my day job duties for much of the last half century. 

Other people are more talented and capable psychics generally than I. 

I would like to think I am also in the situation of ⅓ of psychics being better than me and me better than ⅔ of psychics, but I think that would likely be the case only in my areas of specific interest (earth empathy, global divination, clearing, rescue, etc) - although, as with my former day job, my interest and application may mean I am better than I am suggesting.

In other areas (e.g., conventional Tarot), I would refer anyone who came to me for help in that area to others. 

Now that I have retired, I can work at my psychic ability more, and look at developing my skills more (and am, in fact, doing so).

Spirituality is a far more ... unclear area. I have probably done more work on spirituality than any of the other areas in my life, and I consider myself competent & capable, but definitely NOT the best in the world in that area either.

One other area I consider myself to be quite capable in is teaching - going all the way back to being a teenager in sailing, when I was given the people who were struggling most to teach. 

So teaching and spirituality are areas where I may be better than the other areas, but I know there are others who are better than I - and I am quite comfortable with that. 

I consider the desperate drive many people have to be “the best” counterproductive - and dangerous. In my day job, whenever asked about my driving skills, for instance, despite the courses I have done and the experience with difficult driving conditions, I NEVER rated myself any better than average (whereas everyone else thought they were best ... ).

People don’t have to be the absolute best to be able to do good, or to be able to help others.

Remember that when assessing your life, and whether you should try to help or not - and also remember that you may find others who are better suited for you than what I present on this blog. 

Also remember that how good you are is not only talent: it is how much and how well you work at developing that talent. 

 ... and what you do or don’t do with it ...

PS - as an illustration of an area I lack talent, there is an online version of Solitaire I play where ¾ of the players are better than me ... and I couldn’t care less: I enjoy the game, have no desire to improve against others, and just play it for the relaxation and fun of it.

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below, and there’s also Instagram.  Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).

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