/** Really informal and unrelated thoughts, that don’t get thrown into other posts?
The Idea Of A Romanticized Life?
I think the links that come up from a Google search (here, here, here) are all fine to practically make changes, but I’m more interested in the broader “perspective shift.” Learning and practicing how to view a familiar image differently?
The Top 10% (but not what you think)
I keep getting reminded that no matter how you define a set/group of people, there is always this ~10% of people who seem to act different than consensus. The interesting thing is that this 10% of people are the highest quality in their group. My best example is of the 100s of cold emails/LinkedIn msgs I’ve sent so far, the highest quality people generally replied first, promptly, and were consistent. This likely contributes to their reputation and helps garner respect very easily. This seemed so counterintuitive and unusual to me at first. The busiest, well-known, and rather successful people were the most responsive, thoughtful, and genuine in nature…to a random person like myself?
edit: It actually astounds me that my n=1 experience has been this way, and repeatedly. Thus I think it does apply pretty broadly.
Let me give a slightly more tangible example without providing too many identifying details.
I’ve spent some time doing cold LinkedIn outreach. Sending messages, invites, the normal routine for learning more about X, connecting with people in X industry, and finding opportunities to provide value and practice doing X myself. Back in the day, one would send mail or go visit people’s offices or leave voicemails to numbers in the yellow pages, but for me, it was LinkedIn and email.
In my experience, there are around 3 (maybe 4) people that come to mind who meet these criteria.
For them to take 1-2 minutes out of their day to reply to a random email that isn’t going to immediately generate them any value is so rare in my personal experience. Interestingly enough, the connection/relationship I have had with both of these individuals has been constructive, with one having been a tangible partnership with value to them. I’m fortunate enough to have connected and had the ability to provide value (which started out as an outbound message that was hopefully thoughtful) and some belief from them that it was worth the time to engage. Again, extremely rare in my experience thus far, so rare that I think it is commonly seen by other people. I need to ask more people if this has been their experience as well.
Random, Recent, and Relevant Realizations
(in no particular order, that have been further solidified given recent observations)
Generally, it is important to be less harsh on yourself. Not to lose discipline but some cohort of people I think are chronically too unforgiving of themselves and it could be helpful to re-frame how one views themselves in those situations…usually after a mistake/failure/mess-up.
I think that people do change, more often than one thinks, but it can take a lot of times falling to really see that the next time they get up, they actively try to not fall again. Much easier said than done (i.e., not falling).
This is actually something really interesting I’ve noticed recently.
I had learned about 6-12 months ago that it really takes a very, VERY long time to get to know someone…usually.
A next iteration of that is say you have two people, person X and person Y.
On first impression, Person X is viewed below average (saying very high-level and holistically, people view them as below average for a variety of factors), and Person Y is viewed as above average.
After hanging out with said people for numerous occasions, Person X will then be judged as above average, and Person Y will now be judged as below average. They’ve traded places effectively.
What does this mean? Long-term, you actually want to be around the first person, even if initially, you thought otherwise. The beautiful part is in many cases, the first person was actually above average the entire time, but either it wasn’t clear enough to you on first impression, or you were biased/blinded to see that. It also can involve the people changing. I’ve seen more often the first person, Person X, changes or improves to go from below average to above average, but it can as much that Person Y goes from above average to below average, either by active change or increased realization on who Person Y REALLY is…going back to the point…it takes a VERY long time to get to know someone.
Furthermore, say the first impression of Person X is exposed to 10 people. Let’s say 9/10 people get the impression they are below average (and 1/10 has no opinion or believes they are above average initially). Let’s say they change over time or one needs to spend more time with them to realize themselves that they are above average. But not all 9 people spend equal amounts of time with them.
So at some later date, most people still believe they are below average when they have a) changed to become above average, OR, b) were above average all along!
(this is messy and nuanced and I’m way oversimplifying but hope this conveys the point that people are very multivariate and complex, but still simple enough to relate to and enjoy the company of).
How You View Yourself and Rare People
This is a point that expands on the last bullet above, in Random, Recent, and Relevant Realizations. I only realized now that a passive observation recently and a conversation weeks ago are eerily connected.
Was chatting with a friend and the topic was brought up about how you view yourself vs. how others view yourself…thinking about how people view you along different stages of knowing you.
Some people you have only met once —> they only have a first impression, others you may have met a couple of times and thus that “image” of you may be more developed but still insufficient. Then you have people who have been around longer and how they may view you then.
The main point I wanted to make and why it is somewhat related is that high-quality people are pretty rare, I think rarer than one would normally think.
I don’t mean high-quality as in nice people, since at some point “everyone” is a nice person or like a good guy or a nice girl, sure, but really quality people are very rare.
The key here is when you meet these really rare people, the idea is that they should not be taken for granted. Why is that? In my (limited) experience, rare people:
Published on May 30, 2023.