Small fish in a huge pond

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To be a small fish is like being the least person, that person with lesser power or influence or lesser importance than the peers around. It’s like being part of the minority, or the voiceless individuals, or maybe people who are most likely unseen or unheard.

We are or we’ve been small fish at some point in life which most of the time is underrated based on the dark side of it, but have you ever thought of the brighter side of being a small fish in a big pond? Someone said that when you are the smartest person in the room then it means that you are in the wrong room. Meaning that greatness can be achieved when one is more present in a big pond as a small fish if only you focus more on the brighter side of it than the latter.


There’s always something bigger than what we possess. The bigger the fish gets the bigger the pond becomes because there’s always a bigger mountain ahead of you just after climbing a big mountain. Life is in seasons and levels. What differentiates between a small fish and a big fish is time. There’s a time to be a small fish and a time to be a big fish. The twist about this statement is that you only feel like a big fish for a short period of time before you realize that there are other bigger fish than you around, and the pond only feels small to you for a short period of time before you realize that it was just a tip of the iceberg. That’s how life has been modeled, similar to a video game. The more you win challenges the more you unlock other hard challenges and the more you tackle the challenges the more you are equipped to face more hard ones.

We are living in a world where most people want to get there ASAP. Move from being a small fish to a big fish overnight and then make the pond smaller, forgetting that a big fish was once a small fish for a certain period of time. It’s even worse to become a big fish with a small fish mindset or a small fish with a big body. The season of being a small fish in a big pond is a season that prepares you both physically and mentally to handle the season of being a big fish in a small pond. In other words, it’s a season of preparation. Imagine a baby being born and wanting to run? It’s impossible because the baby has to go through the process of gaining muscles to be equipped to run.

Life is a journey that only ends when we die, but as they say the end of something only marks the beginning of something else, that we know not.

We all have dreams, goals, and a picture of what we want our future lives to look like, but without serving the season of being that small person in a group of people, we cannot get there, and if by luck through shortcut we manage to get there, we won’t last because we are not equipped for the season. It’s like jumping from levels 1 - 10 without passing through levels 1 - 9. Every level exists for a specific reason. The prerequisite for getting to level 10 is to go through levels 1 - 9.

Greatness doesn’t come to a multitude, but to the few individuals who are willing to pay the price, the price of being unseen, unheard, and less important, the price of being the small fish, the smallest guy in the room, the price of being part of being comfortably uncomfortable to be counted as part of the minority.

We see many great people with great talents and abilities who end up committing career suicide just because they got there without fully serving the season of preparation. The season of being a small fish in a big pond. The season of learning how to manifest your abilities in a more useful way. You might be more gifted or talented than most of the big fish around you but if it’s not yet time for application, self-destruction is inevitable. It is useless to try and skip the process or the levels because, at the end of the day, you will still come back to the starting point.

There is a reason why the season of preparation exists. This is the time when you get to learn more and make mistakes with less damage. It’s that time when you get to try out new things and fumble without being accountable to anyone but yourself because the circle is still small. It’s that time when you focus and put more energy into what works for you when no one is watching.  As they say, kings are made in the closet, in the dark room where no one is watching. When no one is paying attention, when there’s no spotlight on you, when there are zero accolades, and less praises, fewer followers and fewer likes, fewer subscribers, and less noise, that’s where you grow.

As an athlete, it is easier to study the game from a spectator's perspective than from an athlete's perspective, the same way you learn a lot as an artist when you study art from a fan's perspective than from an artist's perspective. It makes you humble enough to be teachable and puts you in the position of being a small fish in a big pond. The same applies to business, you can’t start a company and expect it to be like the Apple or the Microsoft company in a week because the pressure to meet the demands of their status can kill you. You have to go through the process of being the smallest version of yourself in a place where there are big versions of your kind to gain the muscles for the field.

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