Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel
It’s January, 2019, and I’m four months into the job as a first time VP.
We are at an offsite that I have organized for my team of 50.
My most troublesome employee, the one so many people had sat me down and talked to me about my first week on the job, stood in front of my organization and declared that the only reason I was hired was because my boss wanted to get the bonus offered if he hired someone by September.
Because time was running out, he hired me.
You could have heard a pin drop in the room.
I really didn’t know what to do with that so I said “Welp, they scraped the bottom of the barrel and you got me.”
Thankfully, there was laughter.
That broke the tension and we carried on.
Secretly, I was livid.
With time, I have gained a different perspective.
Maybe my boss did hire me just to get the bonus.
Maybe not.
Maybe my team thought my bottom-of-the-barrel comment was spot on.
Maybe not.
Neither one of them is any of my business.
What other people think of me is actually none of my business.
They may be right, they may be wrong, but if I let it influence how I perceive myself, what I’m capable of, or where my worth lies, then I’ve already limited myself.
It doesn’t have anything to do with my goals or where I’m going.
If someone thinks I’m not cut out for a promotion, or not capable of being an entrepreneur, why would I accept that person’s opinion over my own?
We take ourselves out of the game so needlessly sometimes.
Where I’m headed, there will be speed bumps along the way.
Where any of us are headed, there will be speed bumps along the way.
No matter what we want to accomplish, say it with me, there will be speed bumps along the way.
Why would we turn them into brick walls?
You are, and I am, enough.
If we can accept that, relax into it, and take the emphasis off of external validation, we open ourselves up to truly inspired work.
What other people think of me is out of my control.
I know how I hope to show up in the world, and I do my best to live up to that.
Beyond that, I have to let it go.
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