Growing up means realizing your heroes are people. That’s not a letdown. It means you could be one too.

Finding out that somebody you admired is ordinary up close can feel like being cheated, as if the thing you looked up to was never really there. Look again at what you actually learned. The person who did the admirable thing had bad days, gaps in their knowledge and a temper, and did it anyway. That makes the admirable thing reachable rather than magical, which is better news than the myth was.

Pick one person you look up to and find out something unglamorous about how they work. Then copy the method instead of the image.