The Truth Tied Up With a Pretty Pink Ribbon
I do a lot of things when I can’t
sleep. Mostly I lie there and think about stuff, but sometimes I grab my phone,
hop on the internet and check out Facebook. Of course it’s fun to see what people
post at these times of night, but reading down the newsfeed tonight (or this
morning, depending on your personal propensity for delineating one day from the
next), it occurred to me: Facebook is really my way for me to feel good about
myself.
Let me try to explain.
Years ago when I was a
professional public speaker and communication consultant, I did what you’re
supposed to do – what a lot of professional speakers and trainers do – and conducted
exit surveys of my audiences immediately upon the conclusion of each session. Now,
those of you who do this sort of thing for a living, be it training or public
speaking, know the value of such evaluations is limited to gauging the immediate
gut reaction of only those who had strong enough such reaction to take the 90
seconds it took to fill out the thing (usually a series of questions or
statements responded on a likert or numerical scale). But they offer little to no
reliable metric about the true return on investment in holding the seminar in
the first place. But such evaluations are all we’ve got, so we use them and
take them for what they’re worth.
Anyways …
If I had been hired by a third
party, I would usually scan through the stack of evals (almost everyone
completed them in those days), make mental notes about things they liked, found
valuable, planned to share with others, etc., and also about the things they
said that could help me improve my skills in my chosen craft.
I will never forget this one
seminar – I think the topic was, “Professional Etiquette: More Than Using the
Right Fork” – and if memory serves it was for a group of credit union employees
in Massachusetts. I did my thing – my dog and pony dance, I used to call it –
laced with the right amount of humor, balanced with my own gems of wisdom, and laden
with (what I hoped were) helpful suggestions for making their business world a
better place. Something like that. At the conclusion, as usual, I asked
participants to complete the post-seminar evaluation, as the third party who
had hired me (a Credit Union Association), was hoping to hold more such seminars
as they’d enjoyed that evening.
As a side note, I’m not sure if they’d
enjoyed the evening because of the seminar, or because of the prime rib dinner
they’d just consumed, but I digress.
As people filtered out, they
left their completed forms in the designated box, and when the last person had
left I, as a matter of course, picked up the stack of opinions and began to
read. Most were filled with the kind of innocuous flattery that came with the territory
of working in the industry. I read through the stack, smiling here and there at
the high scores and kind words offered by the many fine folks who’d attended
and truly enjoyed the seminar. Then I came across this one evaluation that was
just plain awful. The participant hated everything about the seminar: the food,
the wait staff, me, and even my hair. This person had criticized everything
about me, including my accent, as a complete waste of her time (I assume it was
a woman from the way it was written) and the company’s money. It was like a
slap in the face, one critical evaluation amid the torrent of compliments whose warm glow I’d just
bathed in. I set it aside and went on to the next one, and it was filled with the
same level of censure. And so was the next one. Three ego-destroying litanies,
one right after the other (I figure they sat next to one another). It was like,
“Ouch,” and then, “Ouch!” and then, “OUCH!” again. Well, I finished reading the
evals, packed up my goodies, got in my car and commenced the long drive back to
New York. But I was mad.
Really mad.
My inner monologue over the next
six hours ranged from “How dare they” to “Oh my God, they’re right. I’m
completely worthless.” It was a painful commute. Beating myself up over what these
women had written – despite that 97 other evaluations (there were about 100)
had been nothing but praise – allowing their opinions to have tremendous power
over me and how I felt about myself, my career, and my life (one had actually
written, “Don’t quit your day job.” Well, I said they were critical. I didn’t say
they were original in their insults). I was, to say the very least, in a very …
bad … mood … when I arrived home.
That’s when it dawned on me.
You see, one of the other
seminars I offered at the time was on assertive communication, and one of the main
themes of that seminar was around the concept of “letting go.” One particular pain
point we discussed was letting go of caring so much what other people think. It
was inspired by a chapter in a book I’d read in this area, by Maria Arapakis,
entitled SoftPower: How to Speak Up, Set
Limits, and Say No Without Losing Your Lover, Your Job, or Your Friends (a fabulous
read, by the way, but sadly out of print. I found my copy on Amazon). The idea
of letting go of caring so much of what other people think was that in doing
so, we free ourselves to make decisions and choices in our lives we can truly
own and own up to. If you allow others to dictate what you should or shouldn’t
do, you will eventually find yourself, one day, at the end of someone else’s
life. You have to live with the choices you make, so you might as well make
them for yourself. As Maria put it, you are the expert, after all, on you (hmmm, perhaps the subject of a future blog post?).
My point is that I was allowing the
opinions of three petty women to have tremendous
power over my own opinion of myself, to the complete exclusion of the other
97% of those in attendance, who thought the seminar offered the greatest
workplace advice since “Never let them see you sweat.” NINETY-SEVEN PEOPLE had
offered praise and affirmation, but instead of believing them, I had chosen to
believe what they had to say was crap, and that these other three were the only
ones who spoke the truth.
Well, the next morning I went
into my office and gathered up all the evaluations, cards, letters of
recommendation I could find, which I had received over the course of my career.
I read through them, picked out a dozen or so of my favorites, put them in a
small shoe box, and tied it all with a pretty pink ribbon. I slipped the box up
onto the shelf of my closet and kept it there, and even added to it over time. After
that, whenever I received criticism or negative feedback – whether well-deserved or not –
that tempted me to go down that emotional rabbit hole of self-loathing, I’d
reach for that box, untie the pretty pink ribbon, and read through the
contents, all the while reminding myself: this, too, is the truth.
I don’t have that box anymore.
It, along with many of the materials from my consulting days, has disappeared during
one of the moves I’ve made from house to house and back again, over the last
ten years. But I do have the internet.
And I have Facebook.
Now, a lot of smack gets talked
on Facebook. You know it; I know it; and if we are at all honest with
ourselves, we have all done it to some extent, from time to time. Some of the
comments I read on other people’s posts are simply beyond rude and insensitive.
They are downright mean. And, to those who have posted them, they represent
nothing but the complete and honest truth.
Personally, I don’t see the
point of loosing such venom, many times, on those who are supposed to be our friends. But why people do what they do on Facebook is another subject
entirely.
My point is this: Facebook offers
an opportunity for us to speak our minds, tell our truth, and get out in public
what we feel needs to be said or recognized. And it gets abused. We all know
it. People post an enormous number of petty, ignorant, scathing and
soul-sucking things there; things, we must admit, they would never have the
courage to say out loud if the people to whom they are targeted were standing
right in front of them. These days, the notion of hiding behind a computer
screen and dishing out ruthless, often uneducated opinions and incomplete,
insidious thoughts is so often cited, it’s almost a cliché. It’s exactly what
those vengeful harpies who completed those rotten evaluations did after that etiquette
seminar, so many years ago. I considered it cowardly and unwarranted, to them,
it was the truth.
Although a lot of smack gets
talked on Facebook, and a lot of depressing and sometimes disgusting news is
perpetuated there, a lot of praise and gratitude are posted there as well. Prayers
are sent, victories are shared, positive energy and warm thoughts are offered,
and support is given. As a friend put it recently, it is such a blessing to
live in a time when we can be there, like this, for one another and stay in
touch this easily, even over vast geographical distances.
So now, when I find myself on
the receiving end of scathing criticism, or experience such crushing stress
that it feels like the entire universe is against me, or I, in any other way,
start down that emotional rabbit-hole, I just go on Facebook and read down my Wall.
I look at pictures of my friends, I count up all the “Likes” I’ve received in
recent days, check out what’s been posted on the Black Sheep group and think, “This
too, is the truth.”
And inevitably, I start to feel
good about myself again.
Facebook is my new shoe box,
tied up with a pretty pink ribbon.
