THE MYTH OF GREATNESS

Have you ever carried the quiet (or not-so-quiet) belief that you’re supposed to do something extraordinary with your life? That if you don’t hit some invisible mark of greatness, you’ve somehow fallen short? 

Yup… me too.

In this episode, I’m unpacking a thought that stopped me in my tracks: What if I’m not here to do anything “special” at all? I share how growing up praised for potential, chasing achievement, performing at high levels, and measuring myself against others created a constant pressure to prove something—and how one simple social media video felt like permission to exhale.

If you’ve ever felt the weight of needing to be the best, the most successful, the most accomplished… this is your invitation to pause. What if special isn’t fame or fortune or impact on a global scale? What if it’s how you move through your ordinary Tuesday? How you love your people. How you keep your heart open. How you show up when no one’s watching.

You don’t have to change the world to have a meaningful life. You don’t have to fulfill some grand potential to be enough. So what are YOU striving for—and why?

Let’s get into it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

This is Unsided.

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Unsided. Unsided.

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Hey everybody, it's Christopher. Welcome back to another episode of Unsided. I'm always happy to be here in conversation with you. I have been thinking a lot about something I saw recently on social media. And it was a particular creator, I believe on TikTok, but it could have been Instagram, doesn't matter, who said, You aren't here to do something special. And it was a little bit of a hook and a catch to get people to watch, I could tell. And I don't know maybe it was rage baiting or not. I looked at the comments, and you know, you can imagine with a statement like that that there would be all kinds of different comments, but I stopped and took notice because instantly I thought, wow, that's kind of freeing to think about. Maybe I'm not here to do anything special. What is special anyway? And for some context, I've spent my entire life feeling like I was absolutely supposed to do something special. Part of that comes from my upbringing, part of that I think comes from being a white man born in the middle of America in the 70s and 80s. And I was told that the world was mine. I mean, I didn't have perspective on that. I didn't learn that until later, and that that's not how the world is presented to everybody. But I had that, and then I had the ability to sing and sing well at a fairly young age. I mean, I guess that's subjective, but objectively I have a I have a good voice. I made a whole career out of it, you know, starring on Broadway. And I and I was performing for governors when I was quite young at all the events, you know, and I'm from Oklahoma, so it's not like there was a tremendous talent pool, but there was talent there, and I was chosen. And I just kept, you know, getting this kind of push from my family and external sources that I was meant to do something special. And it didn't really help the matter that I also had a father who has since passed, God rest his soul, a father who missed the mark of his potential according to my family. And I was his only son, am his only son. And uh he was a very charismatic man and was going on to do interesting things with his life and you know, become an attorney and break out of kind of the pattern of education and limitation that I think some of my family found themselves in, or at least that's how they viewed it. He was a hope for them, and then that hope fell short because of drug addiction and other things and low self-worth. And I kind of took up that mantle. So I have actually gone through my life really feeling like not only am I special or supposed to do something special, but also with this great burden of what is that? And will I end my life having not done something special? Will I end my life having not fulfilled my potential? I'm kind of boiling this down to really basic ideas here. It's more complex than that. But if you think about your own life, you know, I I would wonder, I would be curious, if we were sitting here in conversation, my next question for you would be have you ever felt that way? Do you have any feeling that you're supposed to be special? Now let me add another layer to this. For those of you who are just listening, you may not know this. I'm a queer man, most of you probably know that already. So that adds another thing too. I always felt like an outsider, even though I didn't know exactly what it was when I was a kid. Other people knew that I was different. I wasn't into sports, I was in the arts, I was in the middle of America. I never really had a place to fit in and call my own. I kind of had to create that. And then when I went to school at Northwestern outside Chicago, I was suddenly exposed to many different people from many different walks of life. And I will tell you what, I certainly didn't feel so special anymore. The talent, the intellect, the privilege that I ran into at that school was so much greater than what I knew from my own life. And whether I was actually, you know, less talented than them, less able than them, I stumbled into my own limitations, my own mental limitations pretty fast. I ran straight into a wall with them. Oh, I'm not automatically the best singer anymore or one of the best singers. There's a lot of wonderful singers. Oh, I don't have the privilege of money and relationship the way some of these people do. What am I going to do? And and the people that I went to school with, many of them went on to very high-level positions in whatever field it was that they were in. And I always felt a little bit like the outsider. So that's the first time it really started to become, you know, a thing for me where I started measuring my worth directly against my achievements. I mean, I'm I did that in my schooling years, in my, you know, elementary through high school. I did that as well, but I did it with a certain sense of entitlement and bravado because I was a bigger fish in a smaller pond. Now, for some more perspective, I went to school with James Marsden, if you know who that is. So I wasn't the biggest fish. He was always much more charismatic than I was, in my opinion. Um, we actually, I mean, he was a really, really nice guy. We, you know, we were in choir together, we did some musicals together. I think we even did one vocal competition together, uh, singing some random song. And and I rem I remember driving out to the vocal competition with him. I think he had like a uh, I don't know, a Camaro or a or a firebird or something that felt to me like a really cool car. And he was just such a nice, cool guy. And I remember thinking, oh, I want to be special like that. And part of it was that I had a really low self-worth from some things that had happened to me in childhood. So I was kind of juggling this idea of I'm special, I need to do something special, and uh-oh, if everybody knew the truth of my life, if they knew that my father was an addict, if they knew that I had been molested at a young age, if they knew all these other things, then I wouldn't be so special. So I kind of tried to put on this persona for myself. And then when I got to college and nobody knew me at all, and I was really starting from scratch, I really had to start grappling with this idea of how am I going to actually make my mark? How am I going to overcome the feelings of low self-worth that I have? How am I going to actually feel special? Well, I'm going to do something special. I'm going to be the best. I'm going to be the greatest. I'm going to be famous. I'm going to be rich. I'm going to show them. I'm going to fly back to Oklahoma for my 10-year reunion in a private jet, land at this little airport by my house, take a limo to the 10-year reunion. To be clear, none of that happened. I was on a TV show at the time, and I did feel a little cool for that, but I was still going there trying to prove something. And I think the reason I want to talk about it is because I know this has to be somewhat universal. I don't know the different levels that people feel it. And the pressure now more than ever with social media and the way that we put our lives on display and we put highlight reels of our lives out there and we watch other people do the same, the pressure to be better, to get that next job, to be, to have the best job, to take the most beautiful vacations, to whatever, to change people's lives. You know, in this podcast space, I think I've talked before about the fact that when I listen to certain podcasts or certain creators who are telling you these are all the ways that you have to figure out life. These are all the things that you have to do to live your best life. I'm sometimes intrigued by them, but often I'm very put off by it. Because it just adds another layer to this idea that we're supposed to do something special, that we're supposed to be this greatest, grandest version that's ever been imagined for us. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't and can't strive for that. That's still part of my meditations every day. May I be the best version of myself today, whatever that is. But I've had this deep fear, and I've expressed it to many people in my life that I will get to the end of my days and think, oh my gosh, I didn't fulfill my potential. And it's heightened for me because my potential, I think, is to do great things. And what a great sense of ego is in the middle of all of that. Who am I? Christopher McNeely, who am I to think that I have something great to add to the world? That the world needs me to make this tremendous difference. And the other side of that is why not? Why not me? But the pressure to achieve that, to do something so great, I think, at least for me, it can be and has been overwhelming at times and debilitating in its worst moments. I see a lot of tarot on TikTok. I find it really interesting. Um, I believe that there is certainly an energetic component to it, but I do hear a lot of people start their tarot by saying, You're going to be the first millionaire in your family. You're going to do something so special. You were meant to be a star. You were meant, and I'll look and it'll have 10, 20,000, 30,000 views and 2,000 likes. And that's just one video. So that's 2,000 people who are living with the idea that they're meant to do something great and be the best in their family. And that's wonderful hyping up. I mean, it's great. I'm not actually saying that any of this is bad. So let's be clear about that. I'm exploring a thought that I had in response to a video. A thought that I had which suddenly made the next 40 years of my life maybe seem a little bit easier because what if I'm not meant to do something so special? What if what I'm meant to do, and what if what is so special is the way I lead my life day to day, moment to moment with whomever I'm interacting with. And I do, I do feel that way. I do feel that in every moment I have the opportunity to touch someone in a positive way or a negative way. And that my learning and my growth is to really look at how I move through the world and how much I'm connecting to people and things around me, and most importantly to myself, my higher self. And maybe sometimes because that's so important to me, maybe that's why there are certain levels that I haven't risen to yet. Because I will tell you that my experience of many different people, people who've risen to the very, very, very top of industry or business, it's very hard to do that while going through your day thinking, I want to make sure that I'm adding something to your day. I want to make sure that I'm doing something for you. I want to make sure that I'm making your day more special. Because if we're if we're looking at this idea of greatness as acquiring things or doing things or having a big platform, or, you know, a lot of people interpret it as fame. You know, fame and fortune. Fame and fortune is not as easily achieved when you're concerned about how you're affecting the people around you. I'm not saying it's not achievable. I'm not saying nobody's done that. But I am saying that within my industry, it's very hard to rise above if you're worried about how you're affecting the people around you. Especially if you're amassing money and power and influence. But we look at the people in my industry who have risen really high, are running companies, are very successful actors, actresses, producers, and we think, aha, they've achieved something. Now you may not. You may not look at my industry that way, but I can speak to myself and you can add on top of this your own life experience, put your own industry into it. I can just speak to what I know. But I there was a period when I worked in at a major healthcare institution as well, and I saw it there too. I didn't see it in the same capacity, but I saw people rising to the top having to ignore the wants, the needs, the well-being of other people around them. Because that's a bit of what the society that surrounds money and influence and power in that respect. That's that's how it operates. And again, I don't know that I think that that's bad or good. It depends on what you where you're coming from. There are plenty of people who would look at my life or other people's lives, or perhaps a life lived entirely in service and not in pursuit of fame and fortune, and say, oh, what a waste. Look how much more you could have done. And that's also not to say that there aren't people who are philanthropists and have lots of money and that, you know, that money's bad or anything. It's not that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that there is this drive, even if you're born into a lot of money, maybe even more so then, there is a drive and a push to do something special. I remember hearing Maria Schriver talk about sitting around the dinner table with her parents and her mother who had started the Special Olympics, you know, her family who had a legacy of doing great things, doing special things. And her talking about the fact that every night at the dinner table they would be asked what they had done that was good, that contributed to the world that day. I'm not relaying it exactly as she said it, but I remember it was profound for me because she said it in a kind of an observational way. And I took it as something really inspirational. But also I could tell when she was talking about it that there was a certain amount of pressure, and I don't remember if she talked about that pressure, but that's a real pressure in those families. Are you gonna do something special? What are you gonna do? And some people really fall down. So for some people, it's really overwhelming. That I think for my father, it was really overwhelming. I think that's why he he fell down his own rabbit hole of addiction and self-loathing because he was actually doing something for a living that he didn't want to do. He became a criminal defense attorney because it looked special. It looked like something different for his family. And it was something his grandmother really wanted him to do. And I know personally, as his son, that it was not something who filled him up. He felt a strong sense of justice and the need to help people, and that was special to him. But I think he actually did so much pro bono work that he didn't make the money that you know he thought he should have made, and he didn't make the choices and relationships he thought he should have made, and he just one thing after another kind of compounded, and he succumbed to the idea that he was supposed to be great and instead went the opposite way. And there have been times in my life when I've done the same thing. There have been periods of my life, tough periods of my life, you know, in my 20s when I was taking prescription medication and and um in my 40s when I was working all the time because I was in a in a really unstable marriage and and I had children to take care of, and I was desperately trying to either, you know, like in in my 20s, I was just trying to erase myself because I felt overwhelmed by this pressure to be better and to deal with all the things that I had that I had to deal with in order to do that. And then in my 40s, I it was the pressure to perform, to be a father, to make this marriage work, to to provide. And no matter what I did, and no matter what I've done, I wouldn't say that I feel particularly special. So seeing this video was a relief for me because I can stack up my accomplishments. I can talk about the wonderful education I've been privileged to have. I can talk about the fact that I've played wonderful stages all over the United States and the world, and and and that I've starred on Broadway and that I've made X number of movies uh and you know, 70-something movies in a decade, and I've I've found great success in my life, and I have beautiful children, and I have a beautiful relationship and a wonderful husband, and that I'm still here. All that is really special to me. But uh I'm only just now starting to stop and and and take it in. So this video came, you know, at the right time for me to think, okay, well, why isn't this enough? Why isn't this special? Why isn't the life that I've created special? Not that it's not, but what am I looking for outside of myself to validate myself? What am I striving for? And why do I feel the pressure from the outside world to strive for more? There are other people who would have had the same experience of life as me and not really struggled with the idea that they hadn't done something special enough. Something would have led them in another way and they would have been perfectly content. But if I'm being really honest, by the time I saw this video, you know, here I am in my 50s, and that video gave me pause. And I appreciated it. I appreciated someone reminding me that I don't have to do anything special. And I'm gonna remind you, you don't have to. Special can be whatever it is for you. Creating the life that you want, whatever that looks like, pouring yourself into the things that you love, whatever that is, changing the world on a global scale, creating the best product, being the best and most talented. I mean, I've I've talked about this on my social media before, anyway. The best, the idea of the best is not true anyway, because we're not measuring everybody. Not everybody has the same ambition. But you know, you don't have to do, you don't have to do or strive for any of that. You can. You certainly can. And and I have, and I love it. But, you know, as I start to balance my life more, my inner world and my outer world, and come to a sense of peace with myself, and maybe this is just part of getting older, maybe this is kind of a universal experience. But I I really want to ask those questions of myself. Why am I striving for the things that I am striving for? How am I measuring my life now? Knowing that I don't have to do anything special, being reminded that I don't have to be special, you know, to the world outside of me, that I can do the things that matter most, which are love my family, love my animals, be kind where I can, take care of my corner of the world, share what I have to share quietly. Those are all the things that are the most important to me. When it comes to my work, I actually, you know, when I take the idea of being special off of it, I actually love telling stories. And I love telling stories that connect people. I do a lot of work to make sure that the content that I create now, as opposed to the content that I created earlier in my career when I didn't have as much of a choice, reflects who I am. Would I love to have it reflect who I am on such a massive level that I never have to worry about money again and that I can do any project I want to at any time? Absolutely. That's just freedom. But do I have to do that to consider my life special? Consider that I've done something worthwhile? Do you who are listening to me now in this conversation with me now, wherever you are, do you have to change the world? Do you have to raise the best children? Do you have to have the best family? Do you have to have the most successful business, the most successful family relationships? Do you have to write a best-selling book? Do you have to be the most successful small business in your town? And I'm not going to give you the answer to that. It's a question for you. Do you have to do that? Do you need to do that to fill yourself? And if you look at different times in your life, did you feel differently about that? Would the answer be different? I think these are really interesting questions. And as you know, I don't come on here to give answers. I just pose questions and tell you what I'm thinking about. And my only uh wish would be that you could actually be sitting here with me right now and answer those questions because I'm so curious what stirs in your brain and stirs in your mind. And I know it's really annoying to leave comments and talk after you listen to a podcast, but I it's the option's always there, and I would love to hear what actually does come up for you. But more importantly, hopefully me sharing how seeing this video allowed me an opportunity to stop and breathe for a second and go, hey, wait a minute, yeah, maybe I'm being a little hard on myself. Not that I shouldn't aim high, but who's to say that what I'm doing right now isn't special enough and everything else is just gravy? What about that idea? What about the fact that there is no potential that I have to fulfill? That there is no great grand thing that if I don't hit that mark, that my life is a failure? What about that? And why is it so universal? And why do we feel the need to do that to each other, to push each other? And why does every video that we see have to be like if you want to have the best life, if you want to make the most money, if you why does that have to be? And why do those videos and those creators get so much attention? I have to think it's because we all feel like we're we're supposed to do something extra special. And as part of a bigger conversation, particularly in the West here, because I think it's really big in the West, I can't speak much to the rest of the world, but when you're in a capitalist society that's all about producing, producing, producing, of course. And of course that's how we're gonna feel for the most part. And when you're in a society that rewards being the best rather than just living your best life for you, when it throws money and resources. At people who seemingly have done something so great, then we all are looking towards that. But it's not meant for all of us. And trust me on this one, I know enough people who've gotten to a place on sheer drive and will where they thought that they were supposed to be doing something great and it wasn't what they wanted. And in some respect, that was the same for me. That's why I left Broadway and I started producing. Not because producing was more money or necessarily even easier. But I never quite got rid of the idea that I was supposed to do something so special. And while I do believe that what I'm doing now is the thing that I love to do the most, telling stories, even that has an evolution to it. I used to write down I won an Academy Award, I won an Emmy. I I mean those things are wonderful. But I'm not sure they're special. I think they're just things. When I'm on set with the people, when I'm working with writers, when I'm when I'm going to lunch with other executives, they're all human beings. How I impact their life on a daily basis with my life, that's pretty special. And that doesn't mean that that's enough for my ego sometimes. Because there are moments when I see other people around me who are seemingly doing great things, and I think, oh, maybe I'm not doing enough. And I think probably the day that I saw this video telling me that I don't have to do anything special was one of those days when I felt like I wasn't doing enough, and it was a nice reminder. So I'm here to share that reminder with you too. Wherever you are, however you live your life, whatever you do, whatever's important to you. You don't have to be special. And you can insert your own word in there if special doesn't make sense to you. You don't have to do anything other than be who you are and do the things that light up your heart. And sometimes those aren't connected to anything that anyone else will ever see. It could just be you alone. It could be you with your family, with your animals, with nature. That's special. And that's really the point of life. Those moments we have with ourselves and with the things that we love that keep our heart open, that's special. So whether that is running a country or just existing in your own life day to day and taking care of yourself and keeping your heart open. I'm not sure one is more special than the other. And I'm not sure we should be striving for anything. Anything other than having that open heart. Now, I think there's a lot of people who don't really care to have an open heart and don't really they just want the money and the fame, and that's fine. We're not having a conversation then. You're probably not even here. If you're still listening, then that's not that's either not you or you're moving away from that idea. And no no shade to those people, but that's not where I live. And I think that's why I've had the struggle because I want, want, want to be great, but also I want, want, want to just enjoy my life. And do the things that feel good and be a blessing to people around me. So in the moments when you feel like maybe you're not doing enough or working hard enough, just remember you don't have to be anything other than who you are right now in this moment. You really don't have to be. It's your choice. Do what feels good to you, and ideally what helps other people. That's really special. Okay, my friends. It's been lovely. Thank you for spending time with me. I hope that something I said maybe sparked something for you, and I look forward to the next time that we're in conversation together, learning, exploring. And until then, take good care. Bye-bye.

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Uncided.