“Every artist was first an amateur.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every day, the number of people we are surrounded by who have decided to be brilliant grows. There is a stage that a lot of us hit where we wonder, “Will I ever be that successful?” It happens when you see the latest music video of the girl you knew in high school who decided early on to be brilliant, and has been picking up momentum since you met her. It happens when you see middle school students learning the art of computer coding, and telling you about how their 8-year-old sister designs apps. A question hits you, probably not for the first time: What have I done with my life? I’m definitely not dull, but I’m certainly not brilliant.

Let’s argue that there are two kinds of brilliant people: those who are and those who are not. The difference between the two is so small but so glaringly obvious. Those who are brilliant made a small decision at some point and followed through big time. They decided to try.

You may have seen this before:

…and it is definitely a good reminder. Worthy of magnifying, printing, laminating, and hanging from the ceiling in every room. It helps us remember that brilliance was once on the distant horizon for many of the greats. They hopped on their noble steed, hunted for the holy grail, and had to chop through vines and weeds of rejection and negative feedback almost all the way. It trains us to think of brilliance as a journey, not a visitor that will show up on our doorstep someday if we keep the porch light on while we watch TV late into the night mourning the absence of our million-dollar idea.

Stephen King captured this idea by referring to his inspiration as “the boys downstairs.” He discourages writers from waiting around for them to send up ideas, because they get tired, are under-appreciated, and you need to put in work too. Brilliance does not look for porch lights. It looks for working brains and walking feet.

With all this talk about walking feet and the journey to brilliance, we have to ask another question. What will brilliance look like when we get there?

There is a lot of subtext to that question, including our own individual preconceived notions about our personal goals. I do not want to limit you by giving examples, and I do not actually want you to think of your own examples. Big goals are necessary, but when they are too big-picture, they can be devastating. So what does brilliance look like when we get there? It looks like the everyday efforts to get there, one reachable goal at a time.
I have a friend who may not know she is trying to be brilliant, but she is succeeding. I won’t even try to surmise her definition of brilliance, but I saw her choreograph and teach dance while eight months pregnant. She hosted Thanksgiving (set a spectacular table complete with napkin rings, and roasted a turkey for the first time) the week before she gave birth. She loves hosting, and I dare say she is brilliant at it.

I recently met a teenager who loves writing, who boldly marched into after school write-ins and shared her work with several people she had never met before. Her confidence, striking verbal skills, and promising writing were a daily motivation to the group. Brilliant.

Some people can actually pull off Pinterest ideas. Some people are the original pinners of those ideas. Some people invent Uber. Some people start and run their own businesses. Some people raise amazing kids. Some people work hard every day to achieve their passions. These people are brilliant. Every day.

There is a play called A Raisin in the Sun, during which one of the characters says, “I want to fly! I want to touch the sun!” His wife replies: “First, eat your eggs.”

Profound, isn’t it? And highly inspiring. We can be brilliant today by taking the first step. Comparing ourselves to others is both unwise and IMPOSSIBLE, because we all started the race at different times, and are racing at different rates. Comparing ourselves to our future self is unfair too, because of course our future selves are exponentially more awesome than we are today. We can define our goals AND the way we measure them, and be brilliant now.