Did you know that January 25th was Opposite Day here in the United States? And I missed it!
Growing up, I don’t think I picked up that Opposite Day was real so we’d have fun saying today is opposite day and then trying to talk in negative speak or doing things in a reversed order. It is another one of those ways that, especially as children, we can wholeheartedly throw ourselves into something and not care how we looked doing it. As adults, it’d be great if we could still feel the freedom to do that regularly.
As we get older, I think a lot of us are conditioned to stay in our lane and not make waves. We’re so used to putting ourselves down, or of allowing others to do it to us, that we’ve lost that confidence and freedom we once felt as children. “Bad Chris” is always on my shoulder reminding me that I’m not as good as someone else or that I’ll likely fail if I reach for that gold ring.
Case in point… I recently attended a talk given by a former CTO of a large, multi-national telecommunications company. I definitely felt like a neophyte coming to learn from the master. After all, he was the invited speaker, the authority we were all there to see. On a personal level, I saw that his title was grander than mine and his former company could swallow mine whole without blinking. Heck, I just knew that his house and car were grander and more expensive than mine. I just came in with the understanding that this guy was better than me, at least professionally.
And then he started to speak.
Spoiler alert – he did fine and I definitely learned some things. But I left the talk with a wholly different perspective than I had been expecting.
It began with his PowerPoint slides. They were crowded and some were really difficult to read. They made my inner marketeer cringe as he broke just about every rule about putting together presentation materials. That internal critique suddenly got my brain engaged in a way it hadn’t been and I soon found myself questioning other things such as a technology that he was enamored with but which I, based on some recent reading I’d been doing, was starting to suspect was more hype than substance. Suddenly, I wasn’t just a passive listener; I was a peer who had informed opinions that were every bit as valid as our speaker’s.
This all said, I am absolutely not knocking the presenter. He did a good job and I appreciated him sharing of his knowledge. But more than the topic he was covering, what I really took from that talk was recalling that I – and in fact all of us – are all really good at things and that we should never allow ourselves to be lessened, especially in our own minds. Not all of us do that, certainly, but if you ever find yourself deferring to someone because of a title or experience or your own self-doubt, take a moment to pause and try to adjust your thinking.
What if we could decree that every day is Opposite Day , if only to help us reverse our thinking about how we sees ourselves and measure up to those around us?
I believe in you.
Chris
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