Quality Versus Quantity: The Dynamics Between Order & Chaos

Photo Source: @chief_akili on Instagram & Google Images

One of the more unfortunate aspects of life is that sometimes we bite off more than we can chew.

The only question is that once we realize we’ve done that, are we intelligent enough to spit out the extra or do we try to keep swallowing it down until we kill ourselves?

In 1980, Muhammad Ali decided to come back out of retirement to fight Larry Holmes for a huge payday and unfortunately we all seen how that turned out.

As a result, Muhammad was forced to put his ego back in check and went back into retirement. 

In 1993, Michael Jordan retired from the NBA after he won 3 championships due to the fact that his father was unfortunately killed.

As a result, Michael tried to play baseball as a promise that he made to his father before his untimely death.

However, unfortunately we all seen how that turned out.

Michael got his ego in check and started back listening to his higher self and returned back to the NBA.

In 1991, Magic Johnson reluctantly retired from the NBA due to his infestation AIDS.

During his retirement, Magic tried to operate his own talk show.

Unfortunately, we all seen how that turned out.

Magic got his ego in order, established more businesses and came out of retirement to briefly rekindle his shortened NBA career.

In the summer of 2018, LeBron James has signed with the Los Angeles Lakers.

During his first year, LeBron’s decision appeared to have been going down and classified with those aforementioned bad decisions from former athlete superstars because the Los Angeles Lakers didn’t even make the playoffs.

The universal gossip among the sport pundits and community at large is that LeBron only came to Los Angeles because of his infatuation of Hollyweird.

As a result of this infatuation, LeBron’s impact on the game has declined tremendously up to the point that he even injured himself during one of the basketball games.

From that day forward, LeBron vowed to take even better care of himself and went on a major recruiting campaign to get another superstar to join him.

This is the process of LeBron putting his selfishness (ego) on the side by following the dictates of his higher self.

Why am I saying all this? I am saying all this because each of these examples are decisions that were made from the ego.

The ego is a like a child that enters a toy store.

If they are not checked and monitored immediately, the child will run amok and cause chaos when attempting to gather as many toys as possible, even to the point of having uncontrollable temper tantrums when facing any disciplinary actions.

However, in actuality, all the child needs is a quality set of toys but not too many because an over abundance of toys will get broken too easily down the line and will be left unused for the most part. 

Hence, money is wasted.

The same rules apply to your ego because in life we can be a little too gifted for our own good.

Sometimes we can have our hands in too many different cookie jars and it can compromise our abilities to be great at one or two things when we’re trying to be good at everything.

This is the main problem with the ego overlapping the true self.

Learn to focus on your natural gifts that benefit you the most by mastering them to the best of your ability.

If you focus on too many things at once, you will not live a productive life because quality thumps quantity exponentially.

Quality builds and sustains life; whereas, quantity can destroy and confuse life because too much of anything can cause stagnation, chaos and disorder.