Shame

And how not to be overwhelmed

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash

Suppose something unflattering about you were to become known. What about this would affect you the most, and why?

Let’s say you are searching, applying, but, still, cannot find a job. Or, having exhausted your savings, you’ve had to move back in with your parents. Or perhaps you’re in the middle of a pivot that you just cannot get right. It’s taking too long, and even you are beginning to doubt yourself.

Each of us, on occasion, will deal with something that makes them pause, reflect, and say, “Perhaps I’m not really as good as I have always thought. If I were, I would have seen this coming.”

If this “failure” were to become known by people you don’t think should know about it, there’s a possibility that you’d feel ashamed, embarrassed, or deflated. You might think that such details becoming public could lower your reputation, perhaps in a way that undermines your brand.

Today, I am here to tell you that you shouldn’t worry about any of these things, and I explain why.

The Assumption of Control

First, and especially after we’ve been doing well for some time, we come to exaggerate how much control we have over things. This is misleading.

There is you, and then there is the environment in which you operate that’s greater than you.

Skilled employees will still struggle to find work in a job market where labor is being axed as firms move towards AI. Good people with pure intentions might still not find love in a distorted and polluted dating market.

We feel shame when we think everything is personal, that there are things we aren’t doing, that outcomes would be different if we were doing them.

There is a place for personal responsibility, and there is the place for the acknowledgment of what is beyond us. This is important; you are one person in a system, and there are no individual solutions to systemic problems.

Decisions

Closely related to the above is that you can still lose after making the right decision. That things don’t appear to be going anywhere isn’t evidence of poor decisions. It’s not evidence that it is time to stop and change your approach.

This, at times, confuses because people expect to win with the right decisions; they even expect that winning is the thing that validates decisions.