Richard Taylor describes the lack of excellence or mediocrity as the compulsion to impress other people. If we go our whole lives impressing others we will not maximize our potential, and instead suffer under the opinions of those who judge us. I feel that in order to create your life you have to first create yourself. In my findings on TRP I have found one key dilemma for guys struggling to commit and express the ideas they learn about. Isolation vs Exploration

My Question is in regards to personal excellence. In striving for excellence, is isolation from the masses necessary to achieve personal development, or do we have to drudge through the mediocrity until we are firmly certain that we stand above it.

Imagine this scenario, if you desired to beat a difficult video game, you could play against the computer until you were better than a machine. If machine is greater than man, you would be certain to beat any man. However if you are fighting in a tournament, you need to fight a group round, round of 32, round of 16, quarter, semi, and final. Surely you would like to spar anybody who's a willing opponent to test your stamina and ability against varied skill levels.

I like to sometime test out my beliefs on people. Sometimes I deliberately do social experiments on friends, family, girls, public to test things or even theories in my head to understand how the masses work, and take this information for later usage.

However often times, I opt out of social scenarios because I know what kind of idiocy I will encounter, but still it would be a great way to move on the ladies, or have fun even if it would kill brain cells. eg. I could have went to concert for rapper Lil Pump, knew there would loose bitches, turn up situations but its not worth that to be around that kind of ignorance with fights breaking out and random idiots.

Tell me what you think, is exploration/experimentation better for growth, or is strategic operation and isolation from the masses more important in the long run.