Too Smart?
“When others are proud, you cannot please them.
When you are proud, you find fulfillment difficult,
your expectations are high, and you take everything personally.”
— Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche
(Senior Tibetan Priests are called Rinpoche, or “Precious Jewel.”)
I was a high school and college champion. So when I got to work, I knew all about speech, debate and performance. Ultimately, I knew all about clients and service. I was 26. I was too smart to learn, or even listen… In a perhaps perfect example of slow Karma, I now regularly re-encounter my twenty-six-year-old self, with interesting variations, daily. Everyone is simply too smart, too busy, too self-aggrandized to consider that there may be some extant wisdom about something they have yet to discover and master.
We encounter it everywhere.
A prospect who “knows all about us.”
We’ve never met, but she “knows all about us.”
A client we haven’t seen in a while. We contact him about stopping by to discuss something we’ve been working on, but he already knows all about everything, so, no meeting.
One of our favorite clients moves to a new firm. He’s excited to have our help in the upcoming year. But his colleagues tell him they know all about it, and the training manager can easily handle it. They move on to other things.
So we take it personally.
Really! Don’t they know who we are? Where we’ve been? What we’ve done? The mountains we’ve summited? The world leaders we’ve counseled?
Don’t they know how arrogant and self-absorbed they seem, how narrow, how critical of everything, how impatient and self-indulgent?
Why can’t they open their minds to the wonders we have to share, and the additional wisdom that’s available with continued study?
Can it be, that (just as I was at 26), I’m still too smart, too sure of myself, too certain that I know it all, and too full of me to be able to connect humbly with that other person, friend, colleague, or client?
Wait… What? Me?
Why does making the world better always have to begin with me?
Applications
1. For You
If you find yourself being put off, demeaned, criticized, ignored or stopped… breathe and ask yourself how recently you’ve subjected someone else to that self-same behavior. Consider an apology — even if it’s only in the form of a moment of introspection. You’ll be surprised how quickly what now goes around, comes back around.
2. For the Family
Teaching forbearance is difficult in the absence of a good model, so start by biting your tongue next time you consider laying it on heavy with the children or your spouse. Not just adjusting your tone, but also that faintly superior attitude that comes so clearly across when you feel like you’re not sufficiently appreciated for the stupendous job you’re doing for your family. Ask yourself, “When was the last time I made someone in my family feel what I’m feeling right now?”
3. For the Office
There are so many ways for life to defeat us, but something about being humbled at work really makes us feel inadequate. I’m not promising anything, but what if you swear off criticizing anything or anyone while in the office for a period of a month? Instead, make a point of pausing and taking a breath. Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt to maybe sound a note of positivity about something or someone every now and then.
We’re all too smart these days, too good, too intelligent too experienced.
There’s no room for another good new idea to find purchase in our space.
So, they don’t. But then, we can’t find any purchase either.
Karma, Neh?
If you’re getting bad, Start sending out good.
If you’re getting criticized, Start appreciating.
If you’re getting ignored, Stop ignoring others.
It’s all too easy to be bad. And damned hard to be good.
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