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I’m really, really good at process and organization. This means I excel at getting shit done and making things happen. In my life as a corporate lawyer, I was highly effective. I was also kind of an asshole. I got very frustrated when people couldn’t do what I asked them to do, couldn’t figure out how to do things without me having to tell them every little step of the way, and in general, couldn’t read my mind and do what needed to be done without being told. This is the classic description of a corporate asshole, and a bad manager.
I was good at organizing shit everywhere, not just work. House, kids, school, friend gatherings, other people’s lives. You name it, I was at the top of my game. I was superwoman, and everyone else was just not quite as good as me.
I was desperately trying to prove that I had value in this world because I didn’t think I did.
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The attitude I’ve described may sound like confidence, but it actually comes from a place of deep insecurity. My thinking went, “I’m not that great, and I can do this stuff. So if you can’t do this stuff, you must be a complete fucking idiot.” The base assumption underlying my thinking and actions was “I’m not that great,” and everything else flowed from that assumption. My organizing the shit out of everything at every opportunity—to the point of exhaustion—was an attempt to prove to myself and others that I actually was as good as I pretended to be and thought other people thought I was, but that I secretly knew I wasn’t. I was desperately trying to prove that I had value in this world because I didn’t think I did.
Recently, people I loved and trusted kept telling me that, in fact, I was that great. In other words, I did have a skill that most other people did not, and that skill was appreciated. I could relax into knowing that I was valued and valuable. I didn’t need to prove it to myself or others. I no longer expected everyone else to perform at the level that I was performing in that skill. I didn’t expect them to be me.
I had been so concerned with proving my own value that I hadn’t bothered to find out what other people’s value was.
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When I was able to differentiate my value from others, to see that I had special skills, the logical extension of that analysis was to assume that other people must also have special skills. I had been so concerned with proving my own value that I hadn’t bothered to find out what other people’s value was. I began to view everyone around me through this new lens of curiosity, and it turns out that other people are pretty bomb ass at things that I suck at.
My artistic skills rest comfortably at the preschool level, so artists seem to me to be mind-blowing, otherworldly creatures. During a brief professional hiatus to see if I was good at something other than being a lawyer—short answer: no—my 3D visualization skills were independently verified as being at the 5th percentile, so engineers and people who can put things together are incredibly impressive. I’m cautious and risk-averse, so people who quit their jobs with no money and strike out to travel the world amaze me (and I worry about them). I’m physically lazy, so people who dedicate 10,000 hours to triathlons or marathons or some kind of physical activity impress (and baffle) me. Then there are those people with a capacity to listen and love and connect and be emotionally intelligent. They are my true heroes, because I know that’s the hardest skill of all to cultivate in this life.
It must be said, there are plenty of people in the world whose gifts I’m not going to be able to see—maybe because I can’t take the time—or they’re buried deep within. That’s okay. I try, and occasionally fail, not to judge those people, because I can never know what’s really inside of a human being. I operate from the assumption that because they are a human being in the world, they deserve a minimum level of respect and kindness. Which means not being an asshole.
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A version of this post was originally posted on Medium.com and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Getty Images
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