“When you’re twenty, you care what everyone thinks about you. When you’re forty, you stop caring what everyone thinks about you. And when you’re sixty, you realize that no one was ever thinking about you in the first place.”
– Unknown
“You are dumb. Your hair looks crazy and you can’t sing at all. You run slow. You’re always late and your clothes fit you weird. Your hair doesn’t fall right, and your nose is too big.”
If an enemy spoke to you like this, then it would reconfirm why you two don’t get along. If a friend spoke to you like this, then you probably would not continue to be friends with that person.
However, this is how we talk to ourselves every day in our own heads. The world can sometimes be a difficult and cruel place, but no one will ever talk to you as poorly as you talk to yourself. And no one will ever treat you as badly as you treat yourself. We tend to be harshly critical of our own perceived faults and imperfections while being forgiving or even totally unaware of the faults and tiny flaws of others. We judge ourselves far more harshly than the world around us judges us.
People also tend to overrate the qualities and talents that they do not have and largely underrate the great talents and attributes they do possess. They do the same for what appears to be their natural-born talents, but came strictly from hard work.
I once watched a speaker address a large investment conference. He was passionate, engaging, and held the room in the palm of his hand for the whole hour. I thought to myself that this man must have been born a master of public speaking. He must have addressed his first-grade class with a thundering speech about juice boxes, cookies, and recess. And I thought there is no way that I could ever learn to speak that well.
The speech ended and I headed to a cocktail reception in the hotel bar. The speaker was also there, and I knew I just had to meet him, hear his story, and find out his secrets to life. I told him how much I enjoyed his speech and how in awe I was of his natural speaking ability. I said that I couldn’t believe how he could just stand up in front of a thousand people and rattle off that interesting, passionate, and engaging lecture. The speaker listened to my comments and just laughed.
“That was the 327th time I have given that lecture” he said. “The first hundred times I was terrible. The next hundred were just okay. The next hundred were pretty good. But in these last twenty-seven tries, I have really hit my stride. You are seeing me at my peak. But thank you!”
The speaker was not a perfect public-speaking machine. He took one speech, practiced endlessly, tried, failed, stumbled, and repeatedly got back up to do it again. He learned which parts people liked and which parts made them yawn and check their phones. Now, all the audience sees is perfection. People only see him at his best. They missed the worst. But that worst does not matter now. Gaining worthwhile experience in any field takes a long time. And it takes a lot of patience, practice, failing, and character building.
You can only learn how to be a stand-up comedian by being on stage and failing many times until you know what makes people laugh. You can write jokes, practice in a mirror, and perform for your friends. You can test the jokes online. You can watch other comedians’ videos and visualize yourself being on stage. But you will only become a successful stand-up comedian by taking the stage and doing your act. Again and again. Night after night. Boo after boo. Until you get it right. There is no other way.
Similarly, you cannot expect to be successful in any field without doing the hard work. Public speaking. Writing a book. Playing golf with a two handicap. Being a fashion designer. It all takes hard work, pain, and suffering to earn the skills and confidence that you will need to excel in a field.
These days with the all-consuming influence from social media, we continually compare our every day to others’ highlight reels. We wake up in the morning and review new Instagram posts of friends or celebrities all dressed up, gorgeous, and living the life. Then we get out of bed and shuffle over to the bathroom mirror.
We say or think, “Yikes! I was very attractive last night, what happened to me?”
Do not compare another person’s best to your everyday. Everyone struggles. Everyone has doubts. Everyone has insecurities that they battle. No one has all the answers. No one is perfect.
