The other day, my wife and I were talking about the little laurel crown (wreath) that you see on the heads of Roman Emporers and what they represented.
I mentioned that it probably had to do with a symbol of freedom. I knew that the Romans gave Gladiatorial winners an olive branch as a symbol of victory and freedom, as well as the older Greek tradition of giving Olympic games winners the olive branch crown as a symbol of triumph.
The Roman crown is the Laural, not the olive branch, but it does still symbolize victory. A past victory that is. This idea is where we get the saying, “resting on his laurels.” You’re still living off those good old days when you were pretty awesome.
But every day, we all start at zero. We all have an opportunity to build something special. We have the same starting point as everyone else.
Unless we choose to rest on our laurels. In that case, we are putting ourselves at a psychological disadvantage and one that has real-life consequences.
Jocko Willink recently had a good Instagram post about this idea of starting at zero every day.
Can you believe that you start at zero with everyone else in this world, and you’ve got to prove yourself every day?
Just imagine how much better we could all be and how much better our lives and communities would become.