Fear of the word complacent

I was listening to Casey Kasem on Serius, The year - 1978. He was disusing the death of co-founder Terry Kath and how the band was forced to change because of it. The story was not about the death but about the band understanding that they had become complacent.

Now for me, words have taken on a whole new emphasis in my life. I cannot spell, I have very poor grammar (In fact I just misspelled it grammer), and I mispronounce words. All of this, especially when it is pointed out to you, takes a toll on one's confidence. But lately I have realized that those are just my faults, that's all they are and everyone has something they do worse then someone else. So I have begun a journey to write, learn, read, and try to better myself. So when I write this blog, I write it for me as well as anyone else that reads it that may be unaware of what the particular "word of the blog" is.

So on to today's theme - complacent:

Contented to a fault with oneself or one's actions.

Well what's wrong with that? But I always understood complacent to be kind of a bad thing to let happen. Then I find:

A feeling of contented self-satisfaction, especially when unaware of upcoming trouble.

Now that one fits the meaning better, at least for me. So why all this fuss over over this word? Well it comes down to having to face your fears. Now some folks fear death, or financial ruin, and others loss of standing, for me - I fear becoming complacent.

The reason for this is that I know that it can happen to anyone who lets down their guard. Complacency is the path of least resistance, the easiest road to follow. You become complacent because you do not challenge yourself. I fear it because it wants into my life and as much as I want to keep it at bay, external issues out of my control are helping to create a fertile media for it to take root.

Why be so afraid? Because complacency leads to stagnation, non-growth, lack of innovation. What makes it bad comes down to "especially when unaware of upcoming trouble." Upcoming trouble is your competition that has not become complacent. Complacency stifles creativity and causes one to become stale and boring. It's the one's that offer something new that capture the attention.

But complacency is also very cheap to maintain. No risk in failure because there is nothing new being developed. No added cost because its a fine oiled machine - don't fix what aint broke! Why change it when it is working - it's good enough.............

Complacency happens when you when you realize that you can put lipstick on a pig and they buy it. At some point I will be handed the lipstick, my fear is that I will pick it up and use it