Читать книгу Stop Checking Your Likes - Susie Moore - Страница 11
ОглавлениеSpending too much time focused on others’ strengths leaves us feeling weak.
Focusing on our own strengths is what, in fact, makes us strong.
SIMON SINEK
In childhood, you may have wanted to be Mom’s favorite. Or at school, maybe you craved being the teacher’s pet. Or maybe you went a different route and got the attention of the “cool kids” by being the class clown. And these days, it’s nice when the boss loves you — or when your whole team admires you and thinks you’re the cool boss, right? And now, as we’ve talked about, since we’re on social media twenty-four-freakin’-seven, we count each and every one of those likes as if they’re absolute sustenance. It’s like we’ve come full circle, back to infancy. We’re suckling at the teat of our devices! No wonder we’re more stressed-out than ever, and no wonder antidepressants are prescribed at least four times more than they were twenty years ago.
While I absolutely recognize that depression is a real medical condition and that mental and emotional health are part of overall health, I also doubt that this massive upswing in antidepressant sales can be entirely chalked up to previously undiagnosed mental health issues. I think we’re creating a culture that’s making us sad.
And it’s not our fault. Well, to a point.
I can guarantee you something right now. In some area of your life, you’re grossly overestimating somebody else. You think this hero of yours has something really special, that they were born with something you weren’t blessed with. That they have the Midas touch and that all you can do is watch as they overtake you or keep killing it out there — because hey, there’s the proof! Right? Look at Instagram pics of them wearing that perfect boho-chic outfit in Lisbon! Or their fancy new job title you just saw via a LinkedIn alert! Or their flawless dinner party conversation (more on that later — I’ll even help you dodge questions about family, like I always used to because of my unusual history). And why are they always on the up and up (and how are they always flying first-class, right)?
Here’s something to chew on. These things are within you, too. That’s why you admire them. They’re probably just in hiding. That’s why you notice them in someone else in the first place. Think about it:
Are you jealous that a teenage girl sailed solo around the world?
Are you feeling upset that your super meditative friend went on a twenty-one-day silent retreat? (No, thanks)!
Or that she stays on a raw-vegan, macrobiotic, alcohol-free diet for six months at a time? Hmm.
Does it make you feel insecure or behind that another friend is working every night and all weekend, hardly seeing their kids, to become partner in a top law firm?
I’m going to guess they’re on the less-popular end of the envied, I-wish-that-were-me spectrum. Admired, yes. But triggering you? Probably not! If they do trigger you — damn, you’re really adventurous.
Ah, but Louise from college with her cool blog and stud boyfriend? That might be another story, right? Oh, Louise, Louise, Louise. Are those hair extensions? What diet are you doing? How can you be so pretty and funny? (Her blog is annoyingly entertaining, right? — come on — you read it. And the small spelling mistake you saw on her Instagram post is the only scrap of schadenfreude you’re going to get.)
Well, well, well. Of course savvy Louise is going to show a crap-ton of blown-out messy waves pics. And she’s going to write a lot. They are two strengths that she’s got. But who knows what she’s lacking? She doesn’t have many friends, perhaps? Maybe she’s exhausted and her overall health isn’t as good as it looks (this is surprisingly common). Perhaps that stud boyfriend has an addictive side or is a philanderer. Maybe the idea of public speaking has her so short of breath, she passed up a maid-of-honor position and disappointed the sister she’s always looked up to. Who knows?
The better question is, Who cares?
You.
I know you do. Because I do, too. We all do — to a point. We’re human. And we use what’s in our environment as reference points. How can we not?
But there’s something much more important to start caring about right now. And that’s what you’ve got. Because when you give what you actually have right this second a little light and thought, you’ll find it’s so much more than you think. I promise. No matter what we do on this earth, what contribution we make, all of us play an important role, and we usually don’t even know it.
For example, it kills me when a woman with kids describes herself as “just a stay-at-home mom.” Are you kidding me? I was an au pair for three months in the South of France, and I’ve never been so exhausted or stretched in my entire life, ever. Having a successful corporate job and building a thriving business were a piece of cake compared to looking after kids. You run a house, raise responsible humans, clean up poop, cook, pay the bills, clean up more poop, and do a million other things without pay — or frankly, much praise. You can’t even take a shower or use the bathroom without bringing the baby in. You’re on high alert all day long. You don’t get lunch breaks, coffee runs, or paid time off, at least not without thirteen things to pack with you and a dozen planning worries to think about and a bunch of stroller logistics to manage.
Strength Valuation
A friend of mine told me once that it took a divorce lawyer to make her realize how much she’s worth. She contributed beyond belief to her marriage: she took a back seat in her career for a bit so her husband could excel and so that her kids could have a parent at home (no judgment here — all parenting is hard, and the choices are personal). But she thought she was worth nothing until a savvy lawyer broke it all down. They were equals. I don’t care what LinkedIn says.
Picture this. The prices will vary from place to place, but you get the gist:
•Price of a full-time, live-in nanny: $800 a week
•Price of a three-meal-a-day personal chef: $300 a week
•Price of a home manager who shops, organizes, pays bills, takes kids to and from events: $700 a week
•Price of daily housekeeper: $260 a week
•On-call life coach/date/confidant/copilot to spouse: priceless
•Taking a back seat in your career to play support role to your spouse: potentially millions (this is not an overstatement)
DIRECT MESSAGE
This is not about money being a form of validation over anything else (nor is having a job or any particular work that you contribute). It’s about not discounting what you’re doing, whatever it is. There’s so much more value in whatever you’re doing right now than you probably believe. What might you be overlooking? Your value as a loyal friend (ahem: therapist/publicist/life coach)? The flowers you planted that make people pause, smell, and smile? The way you listen to your coworker as she thinks through a problem? The intrepid travel you do that inspires others to see more of the world? Appreciating your value, however you’re showing up and just being, matters.
As someone who doesn’t have a perfect résumé, I know it’s the confidence, not just the competence, that counts.
One day I met a mom in my building whose kid was at the constantly-asking-why stage of his childhood. Why is that man cleaning the windows? Why do some people have two dogs? Why are the windows black on that car? I’d bump into them often, and one afternoon we were checking our mail at the same time.
“Why are the mailboxes locked, Mom?” he asked. She explained that important documents are delivered via mail and so we have to keep our letters safe. I said to her something along the lines of, “Hey, ya know what? I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you’re such a nice mom! You’re so thorough and patient with his good questions!”
And guess how she responded?
She cried.
Yep. She told me that no one compliments motherhood. That it’s thankless most of the time. “No one tells you you’re doing a good job!” she said, looking in her well-stocked bag for a Kleenex.
She then told me she missed her job and the constant good feedback she used to get from coworkers. She was looking forward to getting back to work once her son started school, which he would do in just a few months. I was momentarily flooded with affection for her and said, “I’ll help! Let me help! I used to be a recruiter and we can do some interviewing role-play! And I’ll tell you how to network your way back in!”
And so we had tea at her place. I asked her about what she used to do, and she told me she was a team secretary at an architectural firm for eleven years. It was a great job, and she was clearly competent, having been there for so long and having risen through the ranks over time. I asked her why she was great at the job.
“Um, well, I was always on time, even early, to work.”
On time? That’s it? Certainly punctuality matters, but an intern on their first day can be on time, even early.
“What else?” I asked.
“Hmm. I have a pretty good attitude. I’m happy to stay late to get the job done!”
I had to take a deep breath.
Arriving early and staying late are great employee traits but, come on! I was looking for what really made her special.
What else?
DIRECT MESSAGE
Practicing active listening and always asking, “What else?” are great ways to get to the bottom of almost anything.
We sat for almost an hour, and after a significant amount of probing — “what else?” many times over — we got to the nitty-gritty of what made this woman stand out. She is:
•A natural problem solver
•Innovative
•Calm under pressure
•Efficient
•Proficient with a million forms of software
To arrive at this conclusion, I asked her this (and you should steal it for yourself!): “What was some good feedback you received at work? Tell me all the praise you remember.”
She’d say things like: “My boss loved how I knew when he was running late. I’d shift around his afternoon schedule and let everyone know what to expect without him asking me first. If it was too tight, I’d have to just make a call and combine meetings or cancel the least pressing one.”
Ahhh, so you anticipate your team’s needs in advance! How wonderful! And helpful. Making calendar calls on the spot like that? That takes some innovative thinking right there!
What else?
“Near a project deadline, it was naturally a high-stress time. I’m pretty calm and people would tell me that I don’t freak out like some of the others — stuff like that. Because stress seems contagious.”
Yes, yes, yes! Now we’re getting somewhere! Calm under pressure! Resilient! Efficient in high-stress environments! What a gem this woman was.
Do you see what we’re getting at here?
She had no idea what she had going for her. I had to root it out of her, like a pig searching for truffles. Yes, her software skills could use brushing up, maybe (whose couldn’t?), but that was no reason to think that someone else was a more qualified candidate than her.
She had to shine a light on what she had and stop overly revering others who were still in the corporate mix just because a 2.0 download of some unremarkable software was on their laptop. Big. Deal. Think for a second: Where are you overlooking a significant contribution you make — or can make? This doesn’t apply just to women, moms, or stay-at-home parents. It applies to all of us.
When Heath and I moved to New York, and I was interviewing all over the place, I had no college degree or American connections to tout. But I knew there were two things I do well: I connect with people easily (largely by asking questions), and I’m also pretty persuasive. But heck, having these qualities didn’t wipe out my nerves. I still felt like a scared kid half the time, a child who’d been given way too much to handle. But I knew I had to soothe myself into a confident mindset in order to get the best out of myself. As I sat on the 1 train on my way to a meeting or interview, I’d replay past career situations in my mind. I’d relive them, my chest tight, hoping the people in this impressive, huge city could find me impressive, too.
And when my interviewers asked me about my education (which was clearly absent on my résumé), I didn’t lie. But I did deflect the question by asking about their education.
It went something like this:
“So, you didn’t go to school here, Susie?”
I straightened my shoulders, not wanting to appear discouraged, and said, “I didn’t. Where did you go to school? There are so many great universities in America!”
And then I’d listen. That was it. Potential disaster averted. People love talking about themselves, and I knew that.
On the persuasive side, I knew I’d need to gloss over the fact that I had no local experience. Coming from Australia and working with a couple of American clients, I knew that some New York execs wouldn’t necessarily place much value on my foreign experience. So I thought about it. I’d worked at a host of cool Australian and Asian companies, but my interviewers wouldn’t recognize those. Even though I’d never worked in America, I’d worked with American brands. And so, I did have American experience! That made me as good as a local, right? So that is all I talked about. American brands. Expedia, Allrecipes, even LinkedIn. Dot-com or dot-au — who cares? I focused on the dot-com part.
I had two job offers and accepted the highest-paying one (it was $75,000). But five years later by the time I was thirty, I was earning $500K a year in the advertising technology field, as we talked about a little earlier. And I got there just by doing one simple thing: using what I had. My ability to connect with people and be persuasive took me a long way. And most of my peers, many of whom had degrees from Ivy League universities and/or MBAs, were making way less than I was — because they were terrible at knowing their strengths.
DIRECT MESSAGE
Whenever it’s appropriate for you, just wear a blazer. Blazers make everyone look and feel more impressive. You can get them for $40 at H&M! Zara also makes great ones. This goes for both men and women. You’ll also make more money as a blazer-wearing person. It’s an unspoken, universal rule.
What strengths are you overlooking because you’re too busy noticing how you are at Excel, how you don’t have a master’s degree, how social graces don’t come easily to you, or how short you are compared to your tall, elegant friend?
STOP.
Knowing your strengths is vital. Our time on earth, and our unique talent, is too precious for us to be focusing on what’s missing. There’s nothing to prove to anyone but ourselves. No one is perfect or has it all going on. The most perfect-seeming among us simply work really well with what they’ve got.
And no one, no one, has every skill under the sun. And everyone, yes, everyone, has problems. Author Regina Brett said, “If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.”
So if we’re going to envy someone’s perfect hair and perfect marriage, we also have to envy their behind-the-scenes problems like their credit card debt, anxiety struggles, verbally abusive partner, or eating disorder. But we just don’t know what these behind-the scene issues are — and it’s not our business. It bears repeating: as proof, just look around you. Do your best friends post on social media their UTI, their tears over their ex, the rent increase they’re freaking out over? Heck, no.
And if it seems that someone doesn’t have problems, it means you simply don’t know them well enough. Because that’s the problem, right? We don’t see everybody else’s crap. Other people’s business is not for our eyes — unless they wish to share it. But we can judge what we do see with a more level head. Because it’s like a quarter of the full picture in a lot of cases. And what they do share? It’s the good stuff they’ve got.
Instead of ruing the strengths of others, you can start putting the spotlight more on your own. This is a really fun thing to do. So few people do it, and it’s highly beneficial for those who do. You can even start with something simple like a StrengthsFinder test. Not just knowing but acting on and revealing more of what you’ve got is life changing. Not to mention that it’s a terrible thing to go through life with diamonds in your pocket and be oblivious to them because your attention is on other people’s jewels.
Comparing Lunchboxes
When I was a kid, I used to feel jealous of other people’s school lunches. Because of my broken home and nomadic family, I went to a lot of schools — more than twenty. We had no money for those cute juice-popper drinks or colorfully packaged Cheez Doodles and sliced apple and carrot packets. At the schools where they didn’t give us a free lunch (with a gross, chunky, and far too conspicuous silver token), my packed lunch was always the same. One peanut butter sandwich cut into small squares, and half a banana. My sister would get the other half.
“They have water at school,” my mom always said.
I mean, they did have water. But lunch was the longest, most exciting part of the whole day. And I certainly had no one to trade snacks with. At lunch I’d eat really fast so no one would see the (lack of) contents in the lunchbox that was too big for my meal. There was a saving grace once — a local church at Christmastime donated lunchboxes to me and my sister. They were the best part about lunch for me. The brand-new pink Barbie lunchbox that went “snap” with a metal buckle.
So if I didn’t have the coolest lunch, what did I have?
I had good writing and reading skills.
I nearly always attracted a nice, small group of friends wherever I went.
I had a generally good aptitude for learning most things quickly, despite switching schools a lot.
Do you see something here? As adults, we often compare what’s in our metaphorical lunchboxes. We compare our relationship, job status, body type, everything, to that of the person with the best of that one thing. But what percentage of your overall life does any one item in your lunchbox represent, really? It’s not the whole picture.
Someone else might have the better-off family, but you’re better in the classroom. Someone else might have the newest, trendiest clothes, but you have the oldest, most loyal friends. Another person might have exciting engagement news, but you’ve just gotten back a perfect health check.
We don’t need to compare lunchbox with lunchbox. Or dating life with dating life. Or career with career. It’s a skewed, disproportionate measurement, and frankly a lot of the time, if you step back for a second to see it, inaccurate.
And the problem with life and with social media is this: you’re just looking at the other person’s one-dimensional lunchbox! Yep — it’s just one or two things per person a lot of the time! For this person it might be her relationship, for that person, her income. For another, her long legs and cool accent. And it’s almost always on the side of what you do not have. And even when it does look awesome on the outside (like my cool pink lunchbox, the thought of which still tugs on my heart), what about the inside? Not always so awesome. You just don’t know.
Another thing to consider is this. What good might there be in not having something you think you really want — at least in this moment?
To continue with the lunchbox example:
•I wasn’t a fat kid (those juice boxes and Cheez Doodles looked so appetizing, but they sure don’t help childhood obesity rates).
•I always felt compassionate toward other kids who didn’t have much. This remains true for me as an adult, and I think it’s made me more generous.
•I appreciate all nice food now. All of it. More than anything! (Contrast this to Heath, who went to an expensive private school and has a mom who is a brilliant cook, but is a very fussy eater!)
Hey — an unimpressive lunch never killed anyone, either. My mom was certainly never apologetic about what she fed us each day, which oddly helped me and my sister feel better about it.
Sometimes our lack seems so big in our heads that it consumes us. Appreciating our strengths really brings us back to a place of perspective — and relief. I remember one girl at school who was upset because my handwriting was “so much more like the teacher’s” than hers. Maybe that was her lunchbox perspective on me! (Hey, looking back, I totally should’ve traded handwriting lessons for a bag of Ruffles. You live and learn.)
Do you need some critical perspective, too? If you’re eyeing what someone else has with a pang, then I’m telling you, you do. Because something serious is happening here. You’re not recognizing what’s within you.
What I’ve Got
Need help?
Here’s how to get over coveting what others have and own what you’ve got:
•Think: What am I fixating on in someone else? Be honest!
•Consider: How much do I really know about this person? For example, are they in debt? (So many flashy-looking people are leasing BMWs and living in the red!) Do they struggle with food issues? Is there a fertility challenge in their lives?
