Hello friends!
For those of you following along with my podcast, this past Saturday (on a Patreon bonus episode I made public, by the way, be sure to head over there and sign up so I can meet my financial goal of becoming a quadrillionaire) I discussed an idea I had recently heard from one of Ireland’s biggest entertainers, Blindboy. If you haven’t heard of him, I would encourage you to consider listening to him speak with Russell Brand on Russell’s podcast Under The Skin. I’ll link the episode here. So without further ado, let’s get into it.
(Note: If you enjoy this newsletter, please consider sharing it with someone who would get a lot out of it. If this was shared with you, you can sign up here to receive it each Monday morning. It’s free, plus you get a handful of special "thank you's" when you sign up).
The idea:
No aspect of your behavior can define your value as a person.
When I first heard Blindboy say this, it didn’t really click for me. He had to go a bit further into detail, speaking about his own life and his own personal experiences before I really got anything out of it. In this scenario, I will be drawing from my own experiences and my own narrative to further explain and unravel what I consider to be an incredibly important lesson.
If you listened to Episode #68 of my podcast, you’ll have heard me discuss this topic in great detail. I had never heard this statement fully articulated in such a breviloquent manner before. I knew there was something to it, and I knew that to some degree, whether conscious or unconscious, I was, and still am (working on it) allowing aspects of my behavior to define my value as a person.
So what does this mean exactly?
Let me provide you an example.
A few years ago, I posted a video called 10 Signs You’re From The U.P.. This video went on to get hundreds of thousands of views in less than a few days. Wow! How exciting! My first viral video. Sweet. With excitement and zeal, I whipped up the next video, expecting another walloping of views. Long story short, it didn’t happen. The video I posted went on to get a few thousand views, which comparatively speaking to the previous video, was an absolute failure. So I made another. And another. But none of the videos went on to get as much attention as 10 Signs. All of a sudden, the bar was set incredibly high, and none of my content was reaching it. I became very discouraged and basically stopped making videos for a period of time not too long after. I was starting to feel bad about myself. I was allowing an aspect of my behavior, e.g., making videos, to define my value as a person, a big no-no.
I began to become very dependent on the outcomes of my creative endeavors in order to feel good about myself. If a video got a lot of views, I felt good! If my song got a lot of plays, I felt great! But if something I did took a big shit right in front of me, I felt bad. Not only did I feel bad about the outcome, but I felt bad about myself as a person.
This conversation is really important to me because I see a lot of young people doing this very same thing these days. Our day is ruined when we don’t get enough ‘likes’ on Instagram. We’re bummed out when our YouTube video flops. We’re disappointed when our newsletter doesn’t grow. We feel like committing social suicide when our Tik Tok doesn’t blow everybody’s mind. And on top of all that, we arbitrarily compare ourselves to strangers online, making us feel even worse.
Sweet!
Sounds good to me!
So how do we solve this problem?
We recognize that we have intrinsic value. That we’re no better than anybody else and nobody else is better than us. That no aspect of our behavior can define our value as a person. To be consciously cautious about how much we beat ourselves up with regards to the outcomes of our creative endeavors. To pay attention to the narratives we’re telling ourselves. To understand that we are collectively struggling on the uphill battle called Life.
This sounds easy, or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe that’s a lot to take in and you feel a bit overwhelmed. That’s because if we’ve been engaging in this type of behavior for an extended period of time, our brains have been conditioned to automatically respond the way we’ve always responded.
Breaking this pattern will be challenging, just like breaking any poor habit is, but by no means is it impossible. Pay attention and begin to notice if you’re engaging in this type of behavior in any part of your life. Becoming aware of our problems is the first step to solving them.
Until next Monday,
Trevor
(Note: If you enjoy this newsletter, please consider sharing it with someone who would get a lot out of it. If this was shared with you, you can sign up here to receive it each Monday morning. It’s free, plus you get a handful of special "thank you's" when you sign up).