It has been decades since I have been laughed at…
And when it recently happened at work, I found myself both confused and aware of a sensitive child still residing within me.
At the time, I was helping a pair of young women, who I suspect would be considered Gen Z, when one of them started to drop her set of keys. With remarkable coordination, she nabbed the key ring midair while maintaining her hold on a cell phone, iced beverage, and a half-opened wallet. Impressed by her choreography, I rather enthusiastically said, “Nice Catch!” I am sure I looked wild eyed in my amazement; and I suspect the words arrived rather explosively. But it was an authentic appreciation for what I had just witnessed.
The physically astute one looked at me, slightly turned up one side of her mouth and attempted to politely receive my adulation. Her companion found my response utterly hilarious. In the immediate, I met her laughter as nothing more than an addition to the experience we had shared together. It was not until she turned around and tried to hide that she was laughing that it occurred to me, “Oh, she may, in fact, be laughing AT me.”
Not entirely convinced I was interpreting the situation accurately; I chose to just smile towards both while we completed the rest of the sales transaction. When she turned around and faced me again, the laughter returned and proved insistent as she unsuccessfully tried to suppress it.
At this point, I was honestly quite confused. I could not identify anything I had done particularly worthy of mockery, so I convinced myself there were a myriad of things she could be laughing about, and there was no reason I would be the object of it. But my rational argument became even harder to trust when they both burst into laughter two feet away from the counter.
That is when I became aware of the presence of the young, sensitive Melissa who was feeling particularly vulnerable in the presence of their laughter and who chose to just stay quiet and try to hide. My adult self made the choice to be kind, polite and present with the two young ladies until we had finished our task together, but there was still a younger, less-empowered choice being acted upon.
Why is any of this important? Well, at that moment I had a poignant realization. One of my most valued and easily identified personal characteristics is curiosity. I write about it often. And I unapologetically own it as one of my finer personal qualities. But when my sensitive inner child was faced with the possibility of being the object of someone’s ridicule, my natural instinct to be curious was fully abandoned. As I have indicated earlier, the interaction baffled me. Generally, when I am uncertain about things, I ask questions. I become curious about what I am experiencing. But the scared child tucked that natural and revered instinct away. In that moment, I hid one of my most cherished qualities, and that makes me sad.
Have you ever considered how much of ourselves is ‘in hiding’ in any given social interaction? In truth, many of the ways we hide socially were learned early in our lives and most of us have no idea that we are even doing it.
When we are children and utterly dependent on others to look after our physical survival, we are biologically hardwired to observe our caregivers and learn what keeps them responsive to our needs. In other words, we learn incredibly early that we must conform to external conditions to have our needs met.
Additionally, our minds are predisposed to recognize similarities and differences. This function works in tandem with our nervous system’s propensity to remain in environments that are comfortable, familiar, and stable. For those of us who grew up in the US, we even learned a lighthearted little song that fostered this kind of cognitive recognition. “One of these things is not like the others, One of these things, just doesn’t belong. Can you tell which thing is not like the others by the time I finish this song?” Sound familiar?
This kind of assessment is not without social consequence. Standing out as different in any way, led to a kind of “othering” that feels so socially threatening that most of us are compelled to find ways to “fit into” our environment and be like everyone else. Or worse, we “other” ourselves and proactively remove ourselves from situations that have not even proven to be unsafe for us. The problem is, when we start these patterns of conforming behavior at such an early age, we slowly lose our ability to recognize and fully possess our unique qualities. Or perhaps even more tragically, we overtly abandon the exact talents we were destined to share with the world.
As we mature, the ways we hide become far less about tucking parts of ourselves away and become highly sophisticated ways of just not being present in our lives. Going through our routine on autopilot is a way of hiding. Using prescribed social scripts in our everyday interactions at the grocery store, or dry cleaners keep us in the shadows of empty exchanged words. Similarly, our jobs and roles in life give us a predetermined list of responsibilities and behaviors to adhere to and our best results often come when we just follow the narrow path already forged.
Indisputably, we are a highly social species motivated by a strong instinct to remain connected to each other. The brilliant innovative minds among us recognized and responded to this drive by developing computers and the world wide web. And with it, we have unprecedented access to information. We are now gaining access to different perspectives that would have otherwise remained limited by proximity. And although we are repeatedly told computers have made us more connected than at any other time in history; a 2023 US Surgeon General report identified that we are fighting an epidemic of loneliness and isolation.
Why is this?
For all their expansive potential, computers also ushered in the trappings of social media and completely transformed our social interactions. Now our social sharing comes in the form of one-sided declarations intended to depict our life in harmony with those likely to read it. Reveal something otherwise unknown or unliked by your roster of “friends” and we have the elegantly simple option of hitting the “Unfriend” button. Our computer’s brilliant skill to spot patterns and link new but similar information is curating an artificial social world that creates the illusion of universally shared interests and experiences. But this repeated immersion into confirmation bias is not without consequence.
Despite all the advances in access to new information, our digital worlds are slowly and systematically wearing down our ability to be interested in and tolerant of differences.
And now that our hand-held devices have become so ubiquitous, we now have a socially acceptable and perpetual distraction from any demands on us being present with the uncomfortable realities of the world we move through.
Let’s be honest, in many ways, our technological “advances” have leveraged our natural instincts against us. With their influence, we have become siloed in our identities. And with their efficient algorithms, we have been virtually surrounded by our own personalized forms of comfortable familiarity. Essentially, we have created our own modern-day version of the Narcissus myth.
But there is a real risk in surrounding ourselves with only those who reflect our own identities and views. Differences have now become the territory of judgement, criticism, dehumanization, and ridicule. And as seen in my earlier example, when our social interactions feel unsafe, it is often even our most cherished parts that will go into hiding.
I recently heard a clinical psychologist share that it has been his experience that most people are hesitant to start therapy because they are afraid of what will be found out about them. Assuming, there is something objectionable and problematic at their core. But what is generally discovered through their introspection is a new awareness of the talents, gifts, qualities, and skills they had not previously recognized about themselves. He went on to say, “Most of my therapeutic work with clients is less about personal development and more about self-acceptance.”
I found his insight quite validating to the core principle of YOU.logy. Within these early learned boundaries of conformity and protection, we have unconsciously agreed to an illusion of personal insignificance. Well, I am sorry, friends. We are living in a world where our gifts can no longer remain hidden. We are living in an “all hands-on deck” reality.
There is something of immense value within each of us that needs our recognition to come into being and serve our collective highest good.
I share all of this with you because a friend recently asked me, “Why would anyone choose to practice the skills you are teaching in YOU.logy?’ (Mind you, she just took a marketing class and was flexing her own new understanding.) But her inquiry is an important one. Why do this? Why should we show up differently in our social interactions? Why should we lighten our grasp on self-preoccupation? Why should we set down the safety of social scripts? Why should we pay attention to the good in each other?
Well, what I found is when I care to know the person, I am sharing time with, I tend to listen more. When I listen more, people share more. When people share more, we each learn more. When we each learn more, our perspective broadens, and our appreciation grows. When our appreciation for each other grows, we enjoy being around each other and many benefits emerge from a newly awakened field of possibility.
So, what is so powerful about expressing appreciation for each other?
Research shows expressing appreciation fosters confidence in others. When people feel recognized, they are motivated to contribute more. When their contribution is valued, they find more meaning and purpose in life and step more wholly into their talents. When people are generously sharing their gifts, their emotional well-being improves. And when we inspire people to step into their highest attributes, we build connections and bring more out of each other.
“It never hurts to see the good in someone, they often act the better because of it” -Nelson Mandela.
One of my most vocal inner critics about YOU.logy is that it is just too Pollyanna. But if you sat and thought about one of your most treasured personal attributes, I suspect, you will find an early memory where someone named and positively affirmed that about you. They saw something in you that you had not or could not otherwise recognize in yourself. For example, I had many grade schoolteachers tell me I was a “gifted” writer. I had no youthful aspirations to become a writer, but I liked knowing that they saw a skill there, and I wanted to “live up to my potential.” In my effort to “be” what they saw in me; I developed a certain proficiency and identity around writing. I tend to think that is more common than not and certainly is supported by the research cited earlier.
Have you heard the saying, “if you spot it, you got it.” That is often a catch phrase used when we are projecting undesirable traits within ourselves onto others. I believe the same principle holds true about the “good stuff.” We cannot catch sight of others’ capacities if we do not have a favorable read on our own. The more we appreciate what we are, the more we can appreciate what we are seeing in others.
Overall, YOU.logy’s commitment to find the good in each other and express appreciation for it before parting ways is a commitment to increasing our collective self-awareness. These simple and actionable steps puts us directly into our sphere of influence and hold great promise in opening personal possibility within each of us.
When our conversations become safe and supportive containers for increased self-awareness, we quite naturally feel a reduction in our personal inhibition and move toward liberating and sharing our highest attributes in the world.
Please share your reactions. Tell us about a time when you created a safe place for someone to share their ideas and talents with you? How could someone inspire you to step more fully into your potential? Tell us about an early experience that defined you in a positive way. Or share with us a time when someone helped you completely shift your perspective about yourself.