Читать книгу Stop Checking Your Likes - Susie Moore - Страница 10
ОглавлениеNo One Else Knows What They’re Doing, Either
Life, wrote a friend of mine, is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
E. M. FORSTER, A Room with a View
My friends joke that I’m the least-qualified person they know. I’m not originally from the United States, I didn’t graduate from college, and I certainly didn’t have any family “connections,” unless you count my dad’s well-known drug dealer “Lips” (everyone called him that because he had big lips). But I was able to do most of what I’ve wanted in my career because of just one thing I learned: everything you need to succeed is already within you.
When I was twenty-five, my now husband, Heath, and I moved to New York City. It was 2009, the job market was bad, and I needed a job, fast. Heath had one that paid him barely enough to cover our living expenses, so our credit card debt was on the up while our savings were going down. Often, whenever friends or family would check in to see how the job search was going, I couldn’t help but feel there was an undercurrent of “Gosh, I really hope you’re not screwed.”
I’d pound the pavement every single day, trying to get interviews, meetings, coffees with whoever would say yes. I was reaching out to second-, third-, and four-hundredth-degree connections on LinkedIn. My life was a string of meetings, coffees, more meetings, and phone calls. This process went on for what seemed like forever (in retrospect, it was really about three months). In that time, I received zero job offers. Nada!
Starting to feel a little deflated, on one particularly freezing day, I had coffee with a new person I’d been introduced to, Donnovan, a super connected media entrepreneur who knew the industry landscape. We met at an iconic NYC restaurant, Balthazar. At the end of the coffee/interview he said, “Look, I don’t have a job for you, but you’re gonna be just fine! I’ll see who else I know that’s looking to hire.”
It was a relief. His vote of approval was much appreciated. It meant I could relax for a second. But in reflecting on that moment now, I realize I didn’t really need it. A couple of weeks later, my persistence paid off: I received an offer from a tech start-up to do a job that I didn’t really know how to do. I didn’t care. I knew I’d be able to learn the ropes quickly, and I was happy to finally be making some money.
Winning at Politics
Fast-forward a few years, and I was at a new tech start-up, doing a new job that I was also “unqualified” for. My position involved getting video advertising dollars from big companies and helping them initiate advertising campaigns through our proprietary technology, which allowed them to run video ads online (yes, like those short video ads that interrupt your You-Tube viewing time. Don’t hate me!).
In 2012 one of the cofounders of the start-up I worked for called me out of the blue about an opportunity. He asked if I was interested in working in DC for the remainder of the year to see if I could generate some political advertising money to put on our platform. To this day, I am not sure why he asked me, but I like to think that he saw me as someone who got results and was open to new projects.
It was the Romney-Obama race, and it was extra harsh. The clients all joked, “New York is descending on DC for the dollars, and then we won’t see them for four more years.” That city is seriously cutthroat. And I was a brand-new-to-the-place foreigner, no less.
This was unlike anything I had ever done. As a native Brit, I had absolutely no understanding of the US political system. Zip. Zero. Zilch. All I knew at that point was that Obama was running again — I wasn’t even sure who the Republican candidate was! So to give myself a crash course in US politics, I watched CNN, MSNBC, and FOX like an addict and read hours of Politico to get myself up to speed and grasp who was who and what the heck what going on.
Then, between June and November, I spent the majority of my time in DC selling video advertising campaigns to political activation committees and advertising agencies. My new title was political sales director, and my second home became the W Hotel opposite the White House. The local taxi drivers even started to recognize me. “Back to the W?” one asked, as I dashed into his car, my ear glued to my phone. I was surprised he knew my destination, but his recognition helped me feel a ping of joy — they were getting to know me here!
I worked that unique, difficult-to-penetrate, and highly complex market like my life depended on it. One night I even had two steak dinners back to back — one at 6:30 and another at 9:00 — to accommodate two different client schedules.
My boss said he would be “thrilled” if I generated $500,000 in advertising. But by November 3, 2012, when the last voting polls closed on the West Coast, I’d generated almost $3,000,000. What’s the moral of this story? I should carve out my niche as a political expert? No. I had found my calling in Washington? Certainly not.
DIRECT MESSAGE
The moral of this story is this: you can do hard things when the word no means nothing (“no thing!”) to you, and when you don’t wait for permission to succeed at something. And that you can totally succeed when you have to learn as you go.
I had no clue about anything political. I didn’t know the difference between Congress and the Senate (shh...I still kinda don’t). And DC media buyers were obsessed with “voter file data” and specific “swing-state high-female-ratio targets” so, naturally, I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. I had to understand how it all worked, fast. But the truth is, I got the basics down, and that was enough. In fact, I consistently find that the basics are more than enough in a lot of cases. If you’re an unshakable optimist and forge ahead undisappointed by rejection, then look out, world!
I know this sounds overly simple, but that’s the magic of it — it really is that simple. Think about it. Aren’t the best and most wonderful things in life pretty (deceptively sometimes, even) simple? We make it all harder than it has to be. My goal was to book $500,000 in ad revenue, and I left come November with nearly $3,000,000. I credit this huge win to focusing on what I did have: a strong work ethic, a healthy tolerance for rejection (more on that to come later!), and a ton of optimism. This was opposed to focusing on what I didn’t have: any connections in DC, an understanding of US politics, or a bachelor’s degree in government (or in anything for that matter). I wasn’t even a US citizen who could vote. This was my first time in this market. I had no reason to succeed apart from a belief that I could. And I understood that not knowing what to do doesn’t have to stop you from doing it anyway.
Reaching, and even surpassing, my goal (and earning a big bonus as well — another lesson learned: always ask for what feels fair) showed me what you can do in a short amount of time with massive application and belief. And get this: the biggest deal I closed was due to an off-chance tip from a new connection I’d made.
It came in the form of a last-minute meeting, on my way back to New York, with a small firm I hadn’t heard of before. I almost didn’t make it because I was worried I’d miss my train. But for some reason, I felt called to go. This wasn’t one of the meetings I had worked so hard to secure; it came my way easily. I felt it was a little universal back pat and blessing, a reward for my dedication. When you get busy, the universe — much of the time unpredictably but with more fervor than you can imagine — meets you halfway and overdelivers. I’ve heard endless stories like this. Those with a bias toward action win. But this I know for sure: so often, we don’t give the universe the opportunity to meet us on the road. We give up too soon. We think that other people know what they’re doing and that we don’t — and that’s a lie. No one knows. Success and failure are on the same road; success is just further down that road. And the road has no finish line. But did you find a cozy bench to rest on a few miles in somewhere, kicking off your shoes and enjoying a mini Pringles pack? To people-watch instead of powering on? It’s okay. We’ve all done it. The road doesn’t disappear. Your sneakers have endless mileage in them. You can slip ’em back on in a second. There’ll be plenty of Pringles in your future, too. And from an even prettier vantage point.
The fact is that no one can give you any power. You’re already powerful. You just need to recognize it and claim it like an enthusiastic bingo winner: “Me, me! Over here, over here!” I felt that way when I went on to become the resident life coach at one of the biggest millennial-focused health and wellness websites in the world without any formal coaching certification. I also felt that way as one of the top salespeople in my advertising career, despite not being a “techy” person or even college educated like some of my Ivy League peers (I’d just smile and nod when techy terms were thrown around in meetings).
DIRECT MESSAGE
If there’s one word that’ll help you live a more successful, joyful, rich life in which you’re naturally magnetic to opportunity, it’s not hustle, strive, focus, persevere, or even believe. It’s relax. Stop worrying so much. Realize how many options lie before you. And then — go for yours! Because as English comedian Ricky Gervais said, “No one else knows what they’re doing, either.” Winners are just willing to not know and still go!
Yes, even perfectly put-together Rachel with her master’s degree in behavioral marketing and her knowledge of every obscure term in the field doesn’t have it “figured out.” Even though she’s always at the office ten minutes early, has a super smart answer for everything, and seems like she has an extra ten years of experience in the field, I promise you, she doesn’t actually know what she’s doing, either. Because no one does.
We’re constantly overestimating other people and their level of competence because we can’t see what’s going on in their minds, and we often really overestimate the value of formal education and “credentials” more than resourcefulness, practical knowledge, and the courage to just go for it. We can’t see how little a certificate or even an advanced degree really prepares (or doesn’t prepare) someone for the difficulties of real-world application. Frankly, because only we see our deepest fears, we think life’s easier for other people. Their fears and insecurities are invisible to us. But they exist. They make mistakes, too (funny how the mistakes don’t show up on Facebook or Instagram).
Impostor Syndrome
Impostor syndrome is what we experience when we feel we don’t deserve our accomplishments, and it happens to basically everybody who stretches outside their comfort zone. We feel like we’ve fooled others into thinking we’re capable and therefore attribute our achievements to blind luck or good timing. Our inability to accept our gifts means we end up feeling like a fraud or an impostor — and on our worst days, we even feel like we’re waiting to be exposed.
When I was a kid back in England, visiting one of my friends in a “nice, normal” house, I’d feel like an impostor. Like, if they saw where I lived and what my family was like, they probably wouldn’t want to be friends anymore. Among the “nice, normal” people, I’d feel a bit like a wind-up doll: Smile! Be cheerful! Say the right things and never forget to be over-the-top with the thank-yous! Don’t screw it up with these nice people!
Impostor syndrome not only prevents us from enjoying our lives and success, it also massively limits our potential. When someone feels like a fake, they often find themselves turning down wonderful new opportunities and creative ideas. Or sabotaging the success they’ve already had. It’s the killer of many what-might-have-beens. And it’s especially common among high-achieving women. I’m not entirely sure why that is, but I think it’s because men don’t question themselves as much and women are simply socialized to think smaller. As the poet John Greenleaf Whittier said, “For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’”
I mean, can we be open for a sec to acknowledging this universal self-sabotaging cover-up we’re all a part of? It’s hilarious, in a macabre kinda way. We’re so obsessed with telling ourselves that other people have it all together, and pretending to have it all together ourselves, when in reality, nobody has it all together.
Still not certain? Let’s test it! Think of someone who seems to have it all. Maybe people like Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, and Michelle Obama come to mind.
Well.
Martha Stewart went to jail for insider trading. Oprah’s openly struggled with her weight for decades. Michelle Obama felt shame over her miscarriages for years, thinking she was the only one. Celebrities — they’re just like us!
There’s even some evidence that Winston Churchill’s whole illustrious career was really just an effort to try to please his mother, Jennie, an American socialite. She was fairly neglectful of him when he was a child and adolescent but very approving of and heavily involved in his political career. He loved his mother but could only admire her from a distance, “like a northern star,” he once wrote. Churchill was also very disappointed about not being able to please his father enough. And he was prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, when he led Britain to victory in the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955.
Hero Inventory
I dare you to research someone famous you look up to. Go a little deeper than a Wikipedia page — biographies are amazing for this — and I guarantee you’ll find stumbles, lack of confidence, failures, and despair peppering their path. If not, sue me.
Write down your hero’s name, and then discover what their flaws are. List it out in a journal so that it looks like this:
Say Yes to Opportunity
Next time an opportunity arises but you question your ability to meet it, what do you say? You say yes. Think Jim Carrey in Yes Man. Then learn as you go. On the job! That’s how you succeed, by saying yes to life and learning as you go. That’s what we’re all doing. Because no one is born with a life directory. We’re just thrown into the void and left there. Like, “There ya go — now, remember you need to pay rent and taxes!”
If you have dreams and big ambitions, know this: other people are out there going for theirs. They might be less talented than you, less qualified, less many things. But they’re saying yes to life and getting on with it. They’re achieving your goals simply because they’re willing to go for it, even though they don’t know everything. They know that they’re in good company with every other just-figuring-it-out-along-the-way human being. They decide to believe in themselves, and that makes all the difference.
Embrace Uncertainty
Even people with unfailing conviction don’t know what they’re doing for sure because there are no guarantees in this world. They don’t know what the outcome of their actions will be, but that just doesn’t stop them. That’s all. They’re more courageous amid the uncertainty of it all. And what in life is certain, exactly?
Remember that story I told you in the introduction about the morning of my first wedding, speeding to the ceremony with my mother-in-law, feeling certain and right about everything?
Yeah. There’s an old saying that only death and taxes are certain. And honestly, that might just be true. The fact is, you might not even live until the end of today. I know it may seem a bit morbid, but let’s face it: dying today is a legit possibility. So what makes you think you can control or truly know anything else, if you can’t even guarantee that you’ll see another sunrise?
We need to learn how to be okay with not knowing 100 percent that what we’re doing is “correct.” There are multiple ways to do any one thing, and there are far fewer mistakes than we fear. But feeling clueless and scared are among the most common experiences on earth. Think about it for a moment — isn’t that true?
I once coached a NASA employee who was scared to seek a relationship because she thought, “Other women are so natural and confident — how do they know how to be like that? I’m so awkward. I can’t date.”
The CEO of a marketing firm I worked with called me right before he would be speaking at a thousand-person conference and said, “The last speaker was so good. I want to fake food poisoning right now. I don’t know a thing about leadership!” At that point, he had seventeen years in leadership and was an expert on the subject.
Once, the editor in chief of a large, influential magazine told me, “I feel like they give me so much responsibility, not knowing my heart beats so fast every time my boss calls my cell. I always think I’m gonna get fired because I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
Here’s the thing: none of us ever really knows what we’re doing. So can you relax and enjoy the not-knowing a little more? Because it’s all there is and ever will be. The world isn’t simply divided into people who know what they’re doing and people who don’t. There are just people who do despite the fear of getting it wrong and people who don’t do because they’re scared to screw up.
You’re never alone in the not-knowingness of your decisions and actions. My coworker called me crying during her pregnancy because she was worried that bringing a child into an imperfect world was a selfish thing to do. But as a married thirty-five-year-old woman without kids, I’ve been told that not having kids is selfish. Nobody knows a damn thing. We don’t even know, for sure, what happens when we die. So can we enjoy ourselves anyway? No other choice is really sane when you stop and think about it.
Life presents challenges and a bucketful of unknown uncertainties to all of us. So learning how to handle what we don’t know, and just chilling out a bit, is a big step toward living a self-approved, self-directed life.
Inner Alerts
What if being happy were simpler than we thought? Cracking the code of a life well lived? Deepak Chopra said that our heart is a “cosmic computer.” In other words, everything you need to guide and direct you is already within.
One of my first coaching clients, Melissa, said to me, “Susie, when I’m at work as an insurance agent, all I do (secretly) is pin fashion looks together and research vintage jewelry.” Her passion was so obvious. She created lookbooks on the weekends, followed designers on Instagram, and always looked beautifully chic, on a pretty tight budget. She just needed to step back to realize it. To acknowledge what she wanted, and then to let it in.
And now, years later? The last I heard was that Melissa’s a full-time stylist, navigating her way in the entrepreneurial world. It’s not perfect or easy, but she knows it’s the right path for her, and she’s following it.
Melissa knew what felt right when she was restless at work. Restlessness can feel annoying in the moment, but if we let it be, it’s really a gift — it’s like your wisest self telling you, “Nice one on getting us here, but let’s keep moving!” And that initial inner alert for Melissa was enough. It got her started. Those inner alerts are always available, on demand. Your computer never shuts down or gets a virus by itself. The only threat to it is your neglect of it. Or sticking your snout into other people’s computers.
We have this amazing, wise, eternal intelligence available to us at all times...but what do we do instead of checking in with ourselves? We check our likes! We check our little hearts and thumbs-ups. And when we’re busy checking our metaphorical (and literal) likes, we’re in a constant needy zone. We’re waiting for external support and approval — and we might get it a lot of the time. But then what?
We need it again, and fast, and we become dependent on external validation. When the real deal is actually there in the mirror the whole time. Because only you know the real you. Does anyone else know what you want in your custom salad, where you want to live, who you want to marry, and when? No.
So giving other people so much power and influence over our lives doesn’t make any damn sense! You are your best and only real approval, filtration, and support system. And that’s enough. When you look in the mirror one day and see an elderly face looking back at you, whose eyes do you see? Yours. Whose heartbeat is still keeping you there? Yours. Who do you answer to for all your choices until your final day on earth? Yep — you.
Did you know that the “right” thing for you just has to feel good to you? This isn’t a narcissistic approach to life — it’s actually a generous one. It doesn’t mean you should go out and have an affair, rob a bank, or indulge in a gossip session that feels bonding in the moment. All these actions might feel fun for a bit, yes. But they’re not loving actions...and so do they actually feel good in the long run?
In the Upanishads, the sacred Indian scriptures, it states: “The good is one thing; the pleasant is another. These two, differing in their ends, both prompt to action. Blessed are they that choose the good; they that choose the pleasant miss the goal” (Katha Upanishad 1:2:1).
Feeling good about something is a lasting feeling, and one that might not feel easy at the time. Perhaps the long-term answer that will make you feel good is to do something really, really hard, like break up with someone. Or leave a job you hate. Or decide to move because you feel called to a place. There’ll be a mix of other emotions, but one thing will trump it all: the choice will feel right to you. Think: When in the past have you made a good, lasting decision? How did the rightness of it feel, even if the process of making it was hard? It was probably a decision that propelled you forward, brought you freedom and expansion, opened you up to more, and didn’t hurt anyone else (intentionally).
When something is right, you know it. And that feeling...think about it. How could anyone else possibly know it (or feel it) for you? They can’t. And before I hear you cry that “doing you” is selfish, know this: the best thing you can do for others is to live at your fullest potential, because we all need real-life role models. If you’re living half a life — or you’re busy constantly changing parts of who you are to keep those likes steady — do you think that makes you generous, giving, and accepting of others? Heck, no! It makes you prone to judgment, jealousy, and criticism because what we do to others is a reflection of what we do to ourselves. If we don’t let ourselves be ourselves fully, we’ll never support other people being themselves fully. There are no exceptions to this.
Clearing Inner Pollution
I have a friend, Catherine, who went to therapy with her husband, James, because he was ready to leave her. She was putting a lot of pressure on him to earn more and think bigger in his career. Catherine’s nitpicking and judgment had swelled to a point where her husband would do anything to have some peace. It led them to the therapist’s office, where Catherine uncovered that she pressured her husband so much because, coming from an extremely achievement-driven, hardworking family, she always did the same to herself. Failure, or “coasting,” was not considered acceptable. She was a high-achieving woman (she worked at Google), and she never let herself off the hook for any mistake. Her husband’s easygoing ways offended her long-held — and ultimately, unhealthy — belief that you can’t be content without constant perfection and relentless hustle. And when she realized this through professional help, she backed off.
Eckhart Tolle says, “As within, so without: If humans clear inner pollution, then they will also cease to create outer pollution.” In the case of Catherine and her husband, the problem wasn’t his paycheck. It was her fixed thinking.
When you have the polluted belief that other people and their approval create your steadiness, you’ll always be sitting in a rocky boat. Because there’s nothing more unpredictable (and often irrational) than other people’s thoughts. Like Catherine seeing James through her high-intensity filter, everyone sees the world and the people in it through their unique filters. For instance, a pageant mom who had been a pageant kid herself might have a filter that makes her see her children’s value as being tied to their physical beauty. A musician might prioritize self-expression over structure. It’s dizzying to think of trying to peer through more than one filter at a time, and ultimately, we can only see the world through our own.
Not long after her breakthrough in therapy, Catherine said to me, “Accepting James where he is...well...it just feels good.” It felt right to her because she loves him and wants to be with him. She doesn’t want to pressure him, but the belief system she had before getting help made her think she had to. So that’s how you know: You don’t consult your parents. Or the best friend you might have outgrown. Or filters out there on a million phone and computer screens. You consult your inner cosmic computer (a good coach or therapist can help you fine-tune it when needed, for sure). Your own inner guide is really the only reliable intelligence there is. And it knows the next right move for you.
DIRECT MESSAGE
No one knows everything. No one can 100 percent accurately predict the future — even the next twenty-four hours of it. We’re all just doing our best, and when we base our actions on our inner intelligence, we are far more likely to be satisfied with our decisions in the long and short term. Because you’re not a plastic bag, drifting through the turbulent winds of other people’s approval, powerless. You’re an adult with decisions to make about how you’re going to spend your life.
The calm confidence you appear to have when you just “do you” in your own quiet way, in the corner of the world that you touch, is sexy as heck, too. People flock to people who seem to know exactly what they’re doing, simply because they follow their inner guidance. Being relaxed makes you popular. The irony, eh?
Check this:
Recall five times you did something for the first time that was scary. What happened? That’s all a courageous life really is. A string of first times.
Know that there is no rule book for life. We’re all just doing our best based on what we know. Repeat this to yourself anytime you see someone who seems to have everything perfectly together and you are triggered by it. Remind yourself that you don’t see the whole picture.
Pay attention to impostor syndrome when it pops up (it does for everyone). Say to yourself soothingly, “It’s okay — we’re becoming X (a speaker, a VP, a good negotiator)!”
Remember that the only constants in this world are uncertainty and change. How can anyone know or predict what’s coming and how to handle it? They can’t. Neither can you. So...relax.
If you need help, go get some! Therapy of all kinds has saved many a person (myself included).
