The 🔑 to commanding respect
Losing jobs, Courage, Real > Perfect, Exhalation
My cousin called me last week because he was having a terrible day. He continues to struggle with addiction into his 30s, and he just lost his 5th job in the past year. After telling me about many things that weren't going well in his life, he said desperately, "Michael, will you share with me a time when you've failed?"
I did. I told him about the time I had a panic attack in front of 50 people at a seminar for my first business.
I told him how I stopped mid sentence, ran to the bathroom and almost puked.
I told him how humiliated I was at that moment and for years after.
At the end of the call, he thanked me deeply and told me how much better he felt.
The status quo in our society is to appear as if everything’s fine. At all times. We all think: “If they see the things that aren't going well, they'll judge me, and then they won’t like me, accept me, or respect me as much."
But that thinking is backwards.
The things that connect us most deeply to others are precisely those things that we think we shouldn't or can't share with them.
Masks
One guy who joined one of my Soul Searching Adventures is one of the most financially successful, talented, high-status people I've ever met. He was leading an amazing life by most accounts. He was rich, had freedom to travel a ton, was in great health, and had a great romantic partnership.
But he was unfulfilled in his friendships. He had lots of friends all over the world, but they were unsatisfying.
When we started the trip, he said that his biggest intention was to work on creating deeper male relationships.
A few days in, I checked in with him. I asked how he felt things were going. He said he still felt like an outsider and like he wasn't making progress.
Then he said he wanted to tell me something but was really nervous to do so. He was squirming and having the hardest time blurting out what he wanted to say (which was uncharacteristic for someone so put together).
Then, with a graveness that would suggest he had killed a man, he said to me: "I just don't think people can relate to me. I have financial abundance and the freedom to do what I want, when I want. And there just aren't a lot of people my age who can relate."
I thanked him for sharing with me and we kept walking.
The next day I asked everyone to sit in a circle, and I asked the guy if he was open to us focusing on him for a while. He agreed reluctantly.
I put him on the spot and asked him if he felt up for sharing with the group what he’d shared with me the day before. With the same awkwardness and difficulty, he slowly let out what he was thinking. He also told us that he’d never felt like he had really close friends in his life.
Then I asked some members of the group to share what came up for them when he said that.
The theme that emerged was that the group felt MORE connected to him in that moment than any other. They didn't care that part of him felt like he was better and more accomplished than they were.
They could finally see a small piece of his messy humanity. His imperfection. And they could relate to that more than they could the superman mask he wore every day.
Real > Perfect
The people around us want to feel us. EVERYONE has shit, and everyone is afraid on some level of being judged or not accepted because of it.
Every time we divulge something about our lives, we make an offering. As if we are holding a piece of ourselves in our outstretched hands humbly saying, "This is a piece of me."
Humans like real more than perfect.
We prefer iPhone videos on Instagram over professionally shot and edited ones.
We prefer real music, with its small imperfections, over AI generated stuff that plays everything exactly right.
In those moments when we're afraid of losing people’s acceptance or respect, we might remember:
I’m the most attractive to others when I’m real.
I command the most respect when I have the courage to say what others are afraid to.
Acceptance is only authentic if the person people accept is who I truly am. Not the mask I wear.
A few other things I want to share with you
💨 Exhalation. A collection of short, science fiction stories. Most interesting stuff I've read in a long time.
📜 A beautiful (short) letter Steve Jobs wrote to himself
🪐 A mind blowing fact. “The observable universe is more than 90 billion light-years across. So far, no human has ventured farther than 1.3 light-seconds from Earth.” –Brian Greene (physicist)
🎶 A couple playlists
Years ago I noticed that the way I was working was somehow related to what I was listening to. When I met Adee, all I was listening to was pretty intense EDM while I worked. At the time I was trying to work as quickly as possible, and I always felt like I was rushing. She called me out on several occasions for holding my breath while I was working. Not good.
At some point I asked myself, what state do I want to be in when I work? The answer was relaxed focus.
Music with lyrics was out because the lyrics were distracting. Super up-tempo stuff was also out because it jacked me up too much.
So I started listening to classical music, more chill EDM, and music with lyrics in other languages. It has worked extremely well. For instance, I'm breathing as I write this.
Here are a few of my favorite playlists:
Joep Beving Radio (classical)
Language (playlist I created with songs in other languages)
Ratatat Radio (EDM that doesn't make you nauseous)
One Ask
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Peace,
Michael