Golden: The Danger of Chasing the Best and How Real Progress Happens

Why staying loose matters more than chasing the top spot. Best suited for: dreamers, goal-setters, and high-achievers in motion.

The gold medalists, the Oscar winners, the best-selling authors, the self-made millionaires, the ones who made it to the top against all odds.

There are many inspirational stories to look up to for confidence, helping us get up in the morning without crumbling under the weight of self-doubt. If only I could be 1% as the greats, what could I do with my life?

Looking at those who broke through and looking at myself can be a dire experience. The gap is vast. Sure, it can be inspirational, but how do I get THERE considering that I am HERE? Is looking at the top the best way to keep moving?

Progress Over Perfection

Roger Federer is the "Leonardo da Vinci" of tennis. He is one of the most accomplished players in tennis history, displaying precision and artistry that makes all he does look easy. However, even Federer warns us of the danger of mythologizing performance over the daily grind that leads to greatness.

"People would say my play was effortless. Most of the time, they meant it as a compliment... But it used to frustrate me when they would say, 'He barely broke a sweat.' Or 'Is he even trying?' The truth is, I had to work very hard... to make it look easy. I spent years whining... swearing… throwing my racket… before I learned to keep my cool."

To put things into perspective, despite playing 1,526 singles matches and winning nearly 80% of them, Federer only won about 54% of the points throughout his career, showing that success often involves frequent setbacks and the ability to recover from them.

How many Leonardo da Vinci or Roger Federer do you know?

The odds of being the very best at anything are infinitesimal, statistically microscopic. For every Olympic champion, thousands of equally disciplined and brilliant athletes came in second, seventh, or never made the team. Talent distribution follows a power law, not a bell curve, and that means the peak is sharp, narrow, and lonely.

The Association of Tennis Professionals governs men’s professional tennis and regularly publishes active rankings that include over 2,000 players. Only one person holds the #1 spot at any given time, making the odds approximately 0.05%. When considering all active tennis players globally—around 87 million, according to the International Tennis Federation—the odds become exponentially smaller.

Winning is a Polaroid flash we love to celebrate, sudden, visible, unforgettable. What if we also found courage in the inch we didn’t give up this week, the tiny shift no one saw that changed our trajectory?

If we make the mistake of equating "the best" with "worthy," we flatten reality. We punish ourselves and others for not reaching a statistically unreachable target.

Obsessing with first place can also become a dangerous trap that trivializes the experiences of actual human beings in their pursuit of excellence. It can warp values, distort our perception of others, and turn growth into comparison and achievement into shame. It's culturally dangerous and systemically sickening.

A surprising number of people who rose to prominence never actually expected to be the very best. Their goal was simply to get in the game and make a living doing what they loved because they knew, consciously or not, that rising into visibility is about talent, as well as timing, circumstance, and the people you meet along the way.

The ones we idolize didn't arrive at their moment overnight. They went through the same slog as the rest of us, the same doubts and dry spells, the same whisper: maybe this isn't going to work. The difference is they kept going long enough for something to shift.

What actually shapes a person is not just the victory but how they navigate the period before anything works—the less glamorous and often invisible part, filled with rejections, pivots, compromises, and setbacks.

If we're looking to learn from people who have accomplished great things, perhaps it's not only their success we should study but also their endurance, their capacity to persevere, even when nothing seems to be happening.

What do you do when you're in it, when the goal feels impossibly far, when the results aren't showing up? How do you keep going without slipping into burnout, bitterness, or blind hustle?

In tennis, the best players glide. They're focused and explosive, but there is a looseness to the body, a grace. When players tighten up, everything breaks down. Movements become stiff, and mistakes multiply, often missing the micro-adjustments that strategy requires.

Rigidity kills adaptability, and it's the same with ambition. When we grip too hard, obsessively compare, and panic, we lose the very thing that makes progress sustainable: joy, creativity, and the ability to shift.

If I’m no longer enjoying any part of the process, maybe it’s time to reconnect with why I began and loosen up without losing focus.

Did I make any progress today, even if it was slight? Did something click that wasn't there yesterday? Was I able to show up, try again, and adjust? Progress is not a destination but a direction. It's the cumulative energy of micro-movements, and when you can name them, you begin to rebuild momentum from the inside.

If you're chasing something important, keep going, but don't reduce your worth to whether or not you reach the summit. The gold is out there. But golden is how we show up every day.

PAUSE. LEARN. MOVE ON.

Research shows that people are more likely to stay motivated when they see consistent, incremental improvement, especially if they feel some control over how they work. That's how agency builds, not from hitting the goal but from knowing you're still in motion.

Carol Dweck, in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, shows how a fixed view of talent can hinder growth, while a mindset rooted in effort, learning, and resilience helps unlock it. The point isn’t to try harder but to relate to setbacks differently, recognizing that becoming happens in motion, not in perfection.

Barry Schwartz, in The Paradox of Choice, reminds us that the pursuit of “the best” can shrink our capacity to act. Sometimes, the wisest thing we can do is choose what’s good enough and bring meaning to it through presence, not optimization.

You can reach Stephen at stephen@alygn.company.