When I was in middle school, one of the hardest things for me to deal with was that I wasn’t the “best” at anything. I was good at a lot of things… playing the flute, writing, math, cooking—but there was always someone I knew who was better.
Now that I’m an adult, I still know people better than me at most things. One of my coworkers is a better baker than I am (and she’s a waitress and I’m a cook); a friend from school is an extremely prolific writer (while I struggle to spit out a blog post once a week); another friend is a fabulous musician.
Believe it or not, I’m not saying this to make you feel sorry for me, or to make myself sound like a pessimistic 20-something with self-esteem issues. Because I’m not. It took me forever to realize it, but it’s OK to not be the best. Someone else is ALWAYS going to be better (unless you’re Chef Ramsay, Guy Fieri, Giada deLaurentis… and then you all get to argue about who’s really the best) and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for who’s going to come along and knock me off my itty-bitty throne.
Case in point… I currently make a pretty awesome cheesecake. And I used to be afraid that my boss was going to hire somebody who was going to be better at making cheesecake than me, and next thing you know, I’m no longer queen of the cheesecake. Then I realized… so what? I’ve worked with people who were always afraid you were going to dethrone them, and it’s awful. I’d rather welcome a new coworker, with all their skills and ideas, than spend the first few weeks of their employment worrying about who’s better. For one thing, a better cheesecake by someone else is not going to end my career, because there is so much more that goes into my current position than simply my skill at making one thing or another.
At least for me, my fear of someone being better stemmed from a fear of being found inadequate and set aside for something better. But I’m not a collection of isolated skills that are valued simply by taking the highest and lowest values. Probably every single skill that I possess, there is someone out there better at one of those things than I am. But no one else has the specific skills that I do, in the specific amounts that I have them. And that’s how we value people, as a collage or patchwork. Just because each piece individually can be found brighter somewhere else, doesn’t mean that your patchwork is worthless. It’s incredibly unique, and each person who sees it is going to value it for different aspects of it—how the pieces work together, the overall color scheme, the size, the variety. I would rather be secure in knowing that I am a totally unique person, the best at being me, than spend my life worrying that someone is going to come along and take the shine out of one aspect of who I am.
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Even if someone isn’t better than me, they’re MORE… more tired, busier, have more problems. I’m sure you know what I mean—You tell someone you’ve been really busy this week so you’re tired, and they reply with a laundry list of everything that they did that week which makes you sound like you’ve been eating bonbons and watching soap operas, and just to top it off (in case you weren’t feeling like an underachieving, whining little brat) both their kids had the stomach bug and were home from school all week.
When it comes to someone else being more tired or busier or whatever, what you don’t hear in that laundry list is the need for sympathy. Just as I stated that I was tired because I wanted an understanding ear to listen and give me sympathy, they’re responding with their need for sympathy. It’s not a game of tiredness one-upping… bottom line is that you’re both tired. Doesn’t matter who has the better reason to be tired, and getting all defensive about who is more is just going to exhaust you both even further. In a perfect world, you’d both acknowledge and sympathize with each other’s exhaustion and work alongside the other until you were both done. I’ve rarely seen that happen. Instead, what I’ve discovered is that in order for me to coexist peacefully with the person (coworker), I have to let go of my need for sympathy and give them what they need, while at the same time realizing that their tiredness does not invalidate mine.
In some ways, it’s the same as someone being better than me at something. Just because someone’s cheesecake is better, doesn’t mean mine isn’t good. And if I spend my time moping because theirs is better, mine will never get any better. I’d rather learn from them than resent them.
Now, this isn’t meant to be some la-di-da “let’s all work together and appreciate each other and we’ll all be HAPPY!” sort of post. I just know that I wasted so much time worrying and resenting and being afraid when I could have learned so much and built such better relationships, that if I can articulate that and save someone else the hassle of figuring it out, I’ll be HAPPY.
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