"I am taking life as it comes" my friend said, quite confident that there is nothing wrong with this approach. And quite honestly, there might not be anything wrong with this approach in a normal world - but in her case, that wasn't the case. Even though she laced this sentence with words like "adventure", "real fun", "let the universe take control"; it didn't sound that convincing to me.
What she meant here was "I am not thinking of the future, and would rather be on an auto-pilot because it is not that damaging anyway". The reason I know this is because I was exactly at the same place as she is at, a few years back.
How it all starts:
The survival instinct: We are animals, at the end of the day, and we are driven by the need to survive just fine. Being competitive, thriving, flourishing are all traits that a lot of us have; but the end need is to survive without hurdles. Given this instinct, we could sometimes slack by knowing we have a cushion to fall back to. Since thriving is not the first instinct - we can definitely cut corners once we understand or see that we would be able to survive even without thriving. It all starts with cutting corners.
The "Good enough" syndrome: If "great job" is not thoroughly acknowledged over time, "good enough" takes precedence. Once we see that a "great job" is not even appreciated enough or is not that desperately needed, our human tendencies would get us donw to just being "good enough" that we survive the task and are not flagged out.
The addictive comfort zone: Our bodies, and our minds crave for anything comfortable. Change is something that is not very appreciated by our minds - it often catches our minds off-guard. Because of this very trait, we tend to turn towards things that are familiar and that are easy for us to accomplish. We cannot, however, accomplish the unaccomplished by doing the same old and the mundane. Comfort zone can easily and quickly become lethargic to one's personal growth.
The fear of failure and rejection: At least 10% of the population (which is a lot) faces with Atkinson's fear of failure. That means, 10% of us would go to any lengths to avoid situations, people and jobs that pose a risk of us failing at it. Given this fact too, a lot of us would not venture out in the unknown to see what is the true potential we hold within ourselves.
Being unaware of one's own potential: Interlinked with the point mentioned above, most of us do not know what our true potential is because we have put ourselves in situations that need us to move out of our comfort zone and do the unexpected. We often underestimate ourselves so much that we fail to see past what we might know - thus leading to staying well within mediocrity.
How it ends (laced with being mediocre):
The end is something we know all to well - a lifetime of potential is wasted because of our misjudgment, lack of initiatives, being addicted to comfort zone and lack of imagination to see what our lives might hold. They do not lie when they say "dream the undreamable", because only then can we achieve what our lives are meant for.
My father usually always says : Our life has so much to offer us, that we often take it for granted and live it out being an average. That should be the greatest fear of all - living an average life.
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