It’s really easy for me to get caught up in a vicious spiral of stress and worry. It’s silly and I always kick myself after the air has cleared but it’s just part of my less-than-ideally-balanced personality. I can get into a big old flap about something not very important. Often, this is linked to my poor communications skills.
I won’t recount the full boring detail of a pickle I got myself into in the last couple of weeks, but I was getting very wound up about it. I lost sleep over the issue, was in a bad mood and wasted time thinking about it. I worried about how to broach the subject without burning too many bridges. I stressed that I might be utterly, utterly wrong. I flapped about whether it was even something worth flapping about. An opportunity arose to work my “point” into another, highly-relevant matter and I sent an email to the person concerned with a touch of a grain of a subtle hint of the thing I was rapidly becoming obsessed about. OK it was a massive rant bashed out in a fury of angry stabbing fingers on a keyboard.
The person concerned is a laid-back kind of fellow and immediately realised what I was getting at and called me. Problem solved in about three minutes. Well done BE. Way to waste precious time and effort. Way to ruin your own day. Way to potentially really piss someone off for no reason. Luckily it was water off a duck’s back.
I have come to the conclusion that a lot of people are extremely bad at:
a) Using their time efficiently. Time that could be spent doing something which would actually improve our existences in one way or another goes straight down the tubes instead.
b) Having any idea what they are good and bad at. I think people are really poor at knowing what they are really poor at. Worse, we are often poor at knowing what we are good at. Sometimes we have to be told that we are good at things. This isn’t necessarily a confidence thing, we just have no way of objectively measuring and comparing certain skills.
c) How much they are or are not appreciated by other people. Have you ever noticed that the people most likely to be shunned for being an arsehole believe themselves to be extremely popular and influential?
d) Knowing what is important and what is not important.
There seems to be a lot of lack of perspective out there at the moment.
“c) How much they are or are not appreciated by other people. Have you ever noticed that the people most likely to be shunned for being an arsehole believe themselves to be extremely popular and influential?”
Far from it.
I think that a sense of confidence through self-belief and sense of entitlement is all that many ‘successful’ people have. They leech off of truly capable but modest people such as your good self. They have no discernable skills or talents of their own but are allowed to assume for themselves a position of judgement.
Dare question their credentials and they get very uppity.
I’ve seen this in all of the many jobs I’ve done – people venerated for no other reasons than that their faces fit and that they talk-the-talk. The herd follows quite dutifully.
I’ve even noticed this quality among children. It is imbued in them from a very early age – before they’ve had a chance to prove themselves in anything.
I think people fall into groups. You are right, some people “get away” with being crap. Others don’t get appreciated when they are good.
“I think people are really poor at knowing what they are really poor at. ”
This is kind of an inverse of Dunning-Kruger. One of the ways incompetence shows is not having the competence to know where your own (in)competence is…
We have public service people at work. Don’t get me wrong – many of them are great. However there are a significant number of them who are so bloody thick that they don’t realise they’re thick. They’ll decide one day from the next whether they’re going to be friends or not. I’d put their IQ at around 90.
I can handle people not liking me – but please be consistent about it.
Worst of all they walk around as though they are the dog’s bollocks.
I’m thick but not thick enough to be unable to realise that I’m thick. I’m accutely aware of my lack of competence. It really holds me back from doing things which involve risk.
Confidence is 90% of the battle which is why you’ll frequently come across people massively more successful than yourself and spend your time wondering just how the hell they did it.
Isn’t this all about Self Image and the Projected Image? I’m past caring what people think about me … but we all react when that self image is scratched. It is very hard to go with the flow and let it all go but more fun trying.
I’ve got to do a perceptional awareness seession with somebody I’ve mentored, who has seriously pissed others off and won’t accept any failings. Apprehensive to approach that because the reaction will not be good – but we all need to know how we are perceived if we want to get on don’t we?
“Isn’t this all about Self Image and the Projected Image?”
Probably!
“who has seriously pissed others off and won’t accept any failings”
I know someone like this. You will be pleased to know that he is currently in training to join the Met as a PC.