There is an amazing girl in my workplace. She is one of those very confident people. She speaks at conferences and never seems to miss a word. She is eloquent through and through. Recently,
I was speaking to a colleague and they were telling me how they wish they were like her. This person himself, is an amazing software developer; he is smart as a whip. He is the kind of person who looks at a problem and will have a solution within ten minutes. We all look up to him. In addition to that, he becomes the defacto team leader wherever he goes. In short, if you were to ask me, I would tell you I would like to be like him. Our conversation revolved around him telling me that he worried that he was not a good enough public speaker. He told me he would love to stand in front of people and move them with his words. In short, he wanted to be like the said girl.
Long after this conversation, I found myself thinking about this guy and his situation. I went deeper and thought about myself and the cute triangle of envy we were all caught up in. When I thought about it further, I thought that there is probably someone who looks at me and wishes to be like me. See the thing is, we cannot all be the same. In a football game there are different positions. There is the goal keeper, there are the forwards, the striker and even the referee. The game cannot progress without any of those people. Granted, the striker may get more recognition than everyone else in the match, however, someone has to be the referee. Let us not forget the cheer leaders, without them, the atmosphere would be dull. None of these people are useless; all have a role to play. And so it is with life.
We cannot all be the faces of our companies; some of us have to step back and do the actual work. Someone has to polish the inside of the house, while another is painting the roof. The thing is, our minds trick us into believing that simply because a task is more visible, it is more important. This is however, not the case. I am not saying we should not work to improve ourselves, what I am saying is, we embrace who we are while working to be a better version of ourselves. We cannot embrace the person we are and pursue the path to be someone else. It’s not always roses in those lives we envy. We look at them and choose to see only the glamour. We then turn around and focus on only the misery in our lives. We have to make an effort, to see how amazing we are. We have to search for that spark within our souls and ignite it with positive energy and self appreciation. To read more posts by Angela, click HERE
