This mortal coil has a few peccadilloes. One of the ones I find most interesting is our reluctance to accept change. Within a few seconds of meeting somebody we squash them into a pigeonhole in our minds. And that’s where they’re going to stay, no matter how much they don’t fit the box.
For example, a young person joining a firm as a junior secretary is probably never going to progress to marketing director, and if she does, it’s going to take more years than she has left. In fact, the only way for her to make a significant career progression is to leave the firm and join another – where she is not pigeonholed, typecast, or anchored in the role of secretary.
It’s not just other people, we pigeonhole ourselves as well. We create an image of ourselves and how we fit in the world, and no matter how incorrect that image, we’re going to hang on to it come hell or high water.
There is a wonderful TV programme in the UK that involves a sparky, young, happy fella helping overweight women come to terms with their femininity. One of the things he does is line up a group of women ranging from thinner to much, much bigger, and then he asks the victim for the evening where she sees herself in this female continuum. Invariably she thinks she is much fatter than she really is.
Then he has a series of professional photographs taken of her minus most of her clothing (tasteful stuff) using one of them as a large poster stuck to the side of a building in a high traffic area. He then drags her out (literally) to interview passers-by and asks their opinion of her body. Inevitably their opinions are much more complimentary than hers of herself.
The moment she realises how gorgeous she really is (and we all are pretty fantastic if we emphasise our assets, rather than constantly trying to hide our bad bits) she undergoes a complete transformation. Her posture improves. Her dress sense rockets. Her confidence leaps. But, above all, she starts to have some fun.
Why am I sharing this? I profiled myself this past week to see if I really was as bad as I think I am. The results showed me why I was struggling, and which pieces of work I was doing I should give up and allow others to do. In fact, the results showed me how I could make a lot more every month while having a lot more fun with a lot less stress.
And then I chatted to the folk that I work with, asking them what they thought my strongest (and weakest) facets were. Their comments pretty much agreed with the report profile.
Yet most of us find ourselves slaving away, day after day, and arriving at the station marked Fifty we feel that somebody stole our luggage while we were in the dining car.
If you want a very useful way to get out of your rut, find out what things you really should not be doing because your continuing to work on them is a sure way to guarantee semi-poverty (or dramatically slow your path to semi-billionairehood – in the non-Zimbabwean sense) then check out Roger Hamilton’s site here, and do your profile. It’s worth every penny in my humble opinion.
And you will find out how much better you are than you think you are, in the strangest places.