#11: On “winging it”

Everybody is just winging it. I was recently reminded of this very important truth. We are so quick to assume things about the people around us. One such thing is how others “have it together.” They’re doing so well. They’re so competent. They’re just better. We turn our guesses as to what is going on inside their heads and in their private lives into realities.

Why is it a harmful tendency? It does (at least) two negative things to us:

1) Because we cannot help but compare what we believe is others’ reality with our own, which we know full well (including the not so glorious details), we are bound to feel like failures.

2) Because we aspire to become better and more like the others who “have it all under control,” we all end up showing up - at work and elsewhere - in the “best” possible way, editing out what we believe are less attractive and less respectable aspects of our lives (the mess, the uncertainties, the mistakes…). As a result, we all end up pretending that all is well. And since all is well (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, with countless studies showing the alarmingly high rates of anxiety, depression and substance addictions in the legal profession), why should law firms and other employers change anything?

I’m not saying that people should spill their guts at work all the time, whatever the context. I simply wish that opening up was more routinely encouraged, rewarded even. So could we get real? How are you really doing?