You Are More…

…than you realize.

I was struck by truth in this statement several times in the last few weeks and finally caught on that this would be a good topic of my next post. It all started innocently enough when my wife and I were looking through some old vacation photos. There were several shots specifically of my wife and she made the comment of how skinny she had looked in the pictures (note the use of the past tense).

Now, my wife – still a beauty decades after we married – is someone who tends to criticize herself… her weight, her hair, her level of fitness… you get the idea. And yet I know for a fact that she was saying these exact same things when those vacation pictures were taken five years ago. However, when she now looks at her younger self, she has enough distance that she can see how good she looked.

I pointed out that her 5-year-in-the-future-self would probably say the exact same thing about the way she looks today. I’m not sure she accepted that statement but I firmly believe that it’s true. We tend to be our own worst critics.

Next, I was having coffee with a business colleague and we were trading notes. He’s in a new role and has some real doubts about whether or not he’s going to be successful. He sees what others are doing and what he is not and is worried he won’t ever measure up. Ironically, this man has 30+ years of experience but is still riddled with doubt when he compares his performance with those he now works with, especially as he sees them as younger and more “in their prime” than he is. So, rather than look back and recall how successful he’s been throughout his career – and have confidence that he’ll do the same again now – he’s more focused on the uncertainty of the future and it’s impacting his performance.

Then, last week, I called a family member for his birthday and we ended up having a long talk. He’s a year away from one of those big milestone birthdays and I was struck by his litany of woes. All of them centered around his getting older and how he’s not able to do as much as he could when he was younger or how he looks older or, striking a similar theme as my business friend, how these younger professionals are coming in and they’re “hot stuff.” It was plain to see that my family member was mourning his youth.

That’s understandable and even normal as we age; we all have to constantly adjust to new realities as we move through life. However, the more we spoke, the more my fear became that this wasn’t just him coming to grips with his “new normal” but rather it was a fundamental change in his perspective which would affect how he lived the rest of his life.

Which brings me to my last example. My father recently passed away at the age of 81. He had been in failing health for several years which was made all the more poignant when you look back at how vital and active he was throughout most of his life. However, when my dad turned 70, his perspective about himself changed and not in a good way.

Dad said something to me on his 70th that, in his head, he still saw himself as being 32. That brought me up short as I was older than that at the time but I also realized that I had the same perspective. In my own mind, I was younger that my biological age so it was a valuable insight to be given.

What I saw happen with my dad from that point forward, however, brought me up short. He now saw himself as being old and, fairly quickly, he started acting like an older man. His memory started to go and then his strength. This continual decline ultimately resulted in him being confined to his bed for the last half year of his life.

To be completely honest, there was a physical condition he suffered from that was at the root of a lot of this, but I remain convinced that it was his perception of himself being old that contributed to his decline. His health still likely would have failed over time but I think his mental state and how he saw himself caused him to give up much sooner than he needed to.

And that’s the point of this post. As I noted above, we have a tendency to be hyper-critical of ourselves. True, there are some of us who are really good at hiding it from others and maybe even from ourselves but I think most of us have this constant degree of self doubt and concern that we won’t measure up.

If we accept that, then that leads to all sorts of potential issues… it can impact our health and mental well-being. It can cause us to play it safe and avoid taking risks, which is where I think most of our growth comes from. And it can reduce the quality of our lives by our seeing ourselves as less than we truly are. My hope, then, would be for all of us to have this greater perspective, to be able to see ourselves through that future lens and recognize how good we look or how talented we are or all that we are capable of right now.

And how do we do that? Well, start with who you listen to. There are a constant stream of external forces that will try and tell us what to think or how to view ourselves; however, the reality is that our own voice is the only one that stays with us throughout our lives. It is up to us to determine whether that voice builds us up or tears us down. So start practicing – today – at seeing just how good you are.

Know that I’m pulling for you.