Like most teenagers, I was a little awkward. On the surface, things were going very well. I was an overachiever. To the point where somebody should have asked me, “Matt, are you okay? You seem to be overdoing it a bit.” And in fact, there was a lot moving around underneath my skin. I didn’t resolve much of it until my thirties, and I’m still a work in progress. Aren’t we all?
The great thing about being a teenager, though, is that people sometimes seek you out. They make you feel that you are, at least, “something to someone.” Despite your insecurities. I was thinking about this the other day. When I was 15, a girl in my brother’s year—three years older—decided to snog me in a snow-covered field, late Christmas eve. Bloody outrageous behavior. Fantastic. Wow. A Hollywood moment in suburban Southeast London. That’s how it felt at the time.
I hadn’t thought about it in years. But it came flooding back to me in the basement of our grocery store this week when I heard an emo pop song. The yelled chorus goes “once upon a time, I was something to someone.” These days, I’m more confident. I’m not a doubt-riddled teenager convinced the world is better off ignoring him. I’m plenty, to a lot of people. I’m enough. No worries. But this is about the moments when somebody is trying to make you feel “less-than.” And how to cope.
The singer, Dermot Kennedy, sounds like a knock-off Ed Sheeran. But 43 million people have listened to the track on Spotify, now. He must be onto something. And despite my best efforts to resist it, the chorus reached me. There in the grocery store, looking at the freeze-dried soups. Before you find your own self-worth and value yourself, it helps a lot if somebody else tells you. If somebody shows you. That’s a universal truth. No matter how fleeting the moment.
What does this all have to do with work? LOL. Good question.
No matter how hard you try to protect yourself, you’re going to work with difficult people. I work from home and enjoy the rare privilege of choosing my clients in a careful way. The thing I look out for in a first meeting is, “do they seem to value my contribution?” That’s it. Am I something to them? Or could I be anyone? It’s not about snogging, either. I’m not going down that road. Not in the #MeToo era. I only mean, is there something about the interaction that says they’re digging the vibe? In a professional context? If they are, then let’s deepen the conversation and go further. If they’re not, no hard feelings. It’s all good.
But not every tricky interaction can end so fast. Difficult people sneak up on you. Then, you need to know how to deal. They often do it out of insecurity. They will try to denigrate your contribution because they’re not confident about theirs. It sounds smug to say it, but I’m used to drawing such people out. As Taylor Swift might say, “haters gonna hate.”
When you feel that vibe, here’s how to deal with it. Picture a spot of light in the middle of their chest, getting bigger. Then picture another light in the middle of your own chest, growing at the same speed. Soon enough, the light will grow beyond the bounds of their outline, and yours. Picture the lights fusing through the zoom room or in person. Picture the light filling the room you’re in. Imagine it filling your neighborhood, your town, your country, and the world. Imagine it filling the universe. That’s it.
The number of times I’ve used this trick. I’ve lost count. The goal is to remind yourself you’re something to someone. It’s also to remind you that this person is, too. That whatever difficulty they might be presenting with, there’s a shared humanity there. Next time you’re finding yourself reacting badly to the way somebody is treating you at work? Try it. You’ll find cutting through to the shared humanity like this is a superpower. At the very least, I hope it helps.
“Once upon a time, I was something to someone.”
🎶
And…have fun with that earworm.
