Mediocrity is comforting but cowardly. It can avoid stress but pays by also avoiding success. Fear fools us into mistaking comfort for happiness. By avoiding challenge we only assure our own failure. The great revel in challenge, eschew mediocrity, and excel in the most excellent. They prefer the more difficult, see problems as opportunities, and easily inspire admiration and good will. To be excellent in little, unimportant ways is to be unimportant with little excellence. Much better to pull out the stops and seize the day.