We Don't Do That Here

The realizations and lessons I have had in my twenties have formed a fundamental change in my deepest assumptions and perspectives.

Starting from my early to mid-twenties, I could feel the wheels of change rolling by inside of me. I have been rediscovering reality anew as the shortsightedness and blindness of childhood wear off. I am becoming someone different; I am evolving and growing every passing day.

As reality unfolds and my inner self adapts, values and habits that I had developed earlier become limiting.

A reality shift demands a personal evolution.

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I quickly realized that I needed to reinvent myself for this new and strange reality. I had hitherto built my self-definition on my identity as a student. Now, not only was I not a student anymore, but I had yet to know who I was supposed to be.

There is a brief period after graduation when we experience an identity crisis. At this time, we are trying to figure out where we belong. We are neither campus buddies nor corporate guys, just twenty-somethings looking for an identity.

I experienced during this period the unforgiving nature of reality. First, reality was not going to let me have whatever I wanted easily, at least not while being the person that school had made me into. The disciplines and values that I had so far developed were inconsistent with what life demanded. A lot of the factors that had made me outstanding as a student now stood squarely in the way of being a successful adult.

I had become so good a student that I was unfit for real life.  I needed to learn fast and change.

This mismatch between being an excellent student and becoming an effective person after school is a common and unfortunate legacy of our educational culture in this country. As young people, we spent our first eighteen years of life proving our intelligence over and over in exam after exam. Then comes the final high school exam; we know that this is it, that the rest of our lives will be determined by this one examination. Nothing else matters. We give it our all. Our intelligence and sheer hard work earn us good grades and university admission.

There, we made it, we have won at life.

It does not take long, however, to realize that life will not hand us our dreams on a silver platter simply because we were good students. We were grossly unprepared for life.

It is like coming into a gunfight with a pocket knife.

Sadly, this awakening comes way too late for most of us. For me, it was a devastating psychological ordeal. It threw me off my feet and sent me wandering for a few years.

Then I began to discover behavioral relics from my schooling that I had carried with me to adulthood and which were no longer serving me: the Prince Complex, excuses, and the Lie of the Lone Genius. Whenever I tried applying these in my life, reality would stare me right in the face and whisper, ‘We don’t do that here.'

Prince Complex (self-entitlement)

I discovered something about myself at about the time I turned twenty-four.

I had grown up with a sense of entitlement which was both a product of my upbringing and my personality.

It was the idea that I was special and that the world deserved to recognize and treat me as such.

In Psychology, it is said that as infants, we tend to want to monopolize our parents’ attention. We know that we are at the top of their priorities and the center of their world. Infants are capable of manipulating this sense of importance before they learn to speak. They throw temper tantrums and cry themselves out whenever the mother’s attention is not on them.

This behavior usually becomes integrated as we grow up and become independent, but bits of it remain in our personalities.

Then it shows up in later life as self-entitlement. The individual still holds the idea that the world revolves around them. They are convinced that reality owes them their desires. The person becomes self-absorbed.

This behavior dynamic is usually so ingrained that the person may never observe it in themselves. They remain a child way into adulthood, still looking to monopolize attention from the people they interact with.

The early sign of this Prince Complex (or Princess Complex, I just made that up) was the idea that I did not have to work as hard as everybody else to get what I wanted in life.

I seemed to believe in an unwritten law that I deserved better than everybody else and with more ease. The world would surely see that I was an intelligent, special, and likable person who shouldn’t be denied my dreams.

I did not have a problem with other people doing well, just as long as they were not outdoing me. I was fine with everyone succeeding on the condition that I was leading them. And not because I outworked them. In my mind, it’s just the way that things were supposed to be – me first, and then everybody else.

If this notion had been part of my personality since infancy, then it was reinforced and justified by the educational culture I grew up in. Whenever another student beat me to the top of the class, the teacher would scold me, ‘Why would you let them take your position?’

Thus I grew up believing the lie of the ‘number one.’ No one was ever allowed to have ‘my position’. And what’s more, I believed that life owed me that.

It took me twenty years to realize that real life does not work in that manner.

The level of ego-check that I felt must be the same as the Vatican went through when Galileo proved that the Earth was not the center of the universe.

Whereas in school I was made to believe I was special, out here I was just another individual. The prince was stripped of his robes and thrown into the marketplace.

There, only the toughest and smartest survive. I had been shielded from defeat and failure all my life to that point. But reality did not care. Sometimes when life threw tough punches and tackles my way, I would take out my old grade sheets just to admire them and remember the good old school days when I was royalty.

These mental habits were not only unaligned with the new realities of life but were also opposed to the person I needed to become.

Once more, a fundamental shift in my self-identity was necessary. New ways of thinking and new perceptions about myself in the world were needed. This was personally devastating at first.

Accepting the fact that I owed the world nothing; I had to prove that I deserved everything that I thought I deserved. And that there will always be smarter and better people than me, and that’s okay; eke, it’s necessary.

I had to learn to pull myself up by my bootstraps because nothing will be handed to me easily.

Excuses

There will always be the chance to shift blame and absolve oneself of the weight of error.

It can be crushing to accept that we have failed, that reality has prevailed, and, that we were wrong. Acknowledging the ignorance and incapability that led to undesirable outcomes takes a sharp jab at the ego. It is easier to convince ourselves that the cause of such failure is external rather than internal hence downplaying our contribution to the outcomes that we get.

Of course, there are always factors beyond our control in every circumstance. However, accepting our culpability in every outcome is an important first step.

Life quickly teaches you that you are on your own in more ways than one.

Once the veneer of my self-entitlement was exposed, I learned that I had an inevitable duty to myself and that no one else was going to step in and step up except me. I could make all the excuses I wanted. I could blame other people. But that wouldn’t change anything. After the curtains were down and everyone had left, I still had myself to answer to.

People could betray me or directly sabotage my plans. I could face the most debilitating circumstances and the worst luck. And then I could sit forlornly and cry myself in pity.

I could have a very logical explanation for why things didn’t work out and put it up on a billboard. And explain this to everyone until my tongue ran dry. Then they would also pity me. They would console and say how sorry they are. Yet I would still have myself to blame. Everyone would go home and I would be left staring at myself in the mirror, and reality staring back, whispering, ‘You failed. Only you are to blame.’

I have learned that taking full responsibility for my decisions and actions is a better strategy than shifting blame.

There will always be an excuse, a scapegoat, for my actions. However, I want to know and feel that I am in control of my life. And the only way to do that is to fully own my wins and fails. Taking responsibility for my failures, even in awareness of external factors, means that I hold myself to higher standards.

I realize that I am capable of much better and I’m willing to rise to it. The path of excuses is a rabbit hole that never ends and at the end of which I lose myself, and my power.

Part of the tragedy of reality is that our lives are brief and fleeting. What’s more, each one of us starts out at a disadvantage; there is always a ‘thorn in the flesh.’ There is a valid reason in each person’s life that belies their rationale for hope. It could be something natural within one’s genetic makeup or an external factor in the conditions of one’s birth or upbringing. Or it may be the cruel hand of luck by which things go one way or another.

No one prepares us for these tragedies, and they are valid grounds for excuses.

But we do not have forever, either. Anyone with a brain can easily attribute their outcomes to something beyond their control. But soon we realize that we better be focusing on the rot within.

At some point in my life, I began to have glimpses of how much sway I could have on reality through the flimsy strands of my imagination, thoughts, and actions. That although I am shadowed by the strong arm of reality and circumstance, I have power, too. And that my failure to wield this power significantly shapes outcomes in my life.

Everything else might be beyond my control, but not what’s inside. Therefore, I do not have to be a victim. I can impose my will onto circumstances and bend them towards my desired ends.

Life has no dress rehearsal; we show up as is and have to nail it on this first audition.

There is always room for blame and excuses when things go wrong; however, to take full responsibility and own up to our actions and the outcomes – that is the noblest way to live.

The Lie of the Lone Genius

My younger years and schooling have had many ideological legacies on my perspectives and perceptions; this one stands out among them.

I was used to demonstrations of individual brilliance. In school, you don’t win in teams – there is only one top student, and then the rest. The more I demonstrated my own intelligence, the happier I made my teachers.

This notion that to win I had to move alone and move fast was encouraged and reinforced. It was based on the idea that not only was I innately better and smarter than everyone else, but also that any attempt to cooperate was going to slow me down.

I was to be the lone genius at the top. Every other student was made to believe the same, so that in the end we were a bunch of strangers in the same class ruthlessly competing for Number One.

While fragments of this mindset remain, I have come to appreciate that reality demands of me to be unselfish and to cooperate. Personal success is tightly coupled with selflessness and service. Remaining holed up inside one’s cocoon of brilliance and talent slows us down. Success is a network.

Even among lower primates, the males know that the way to become the alpha is through cooperation and not sheer strength. Chimpanzees have been observed to form intricate alliances based on mutual assistance. These alliances, as opposed to mere muscle, determine who becomes the alpha chimp.

I have learned that great people are simply people with great teams. Even the so-called ‘great men’ in any industry are proof of this; while they are usually remembered as singular achievers and geniuses, they usually surround themselves with smart and capable people.

Contrary to the African proverb, even going alone does not make us go faster a lot of the time. Real speed is hidden in the apparent complexity and messiness of cooperation.

This is an attitude that we could use in our generation.

The lone ranger mindset only gets us so far; there is need to deliberately form networks of cooperation within and outside our workplaces and institutions.

Reaching out to diverse perspectives, voices, and ideas is necessary.

I have learned, moreover, that this also includes wanting others to win. I might be talented and brilliant, but unless I learn to mind other people’s business and not just my selfish ends, I may never know true success.

There is no monopoly on greatness.