When people look at you like your dog does

Think about the last ingenious idea you had. 

Inside the theater of your mind, it sounded interesting, useful and even profitable.

But then, once you shared it with your team, people looked at you like your dog does. Tilted heads, vacant eyes and drooling jowls. Even as you heard the idea came out of your mouth, you couldn’t help but realize just how absurd it really was. 

Why does this happen? Why do things sound so much better inside our heads? 

Simple. Because humans are idiots. 

Actually, here’s the real answer. When we try to regulate by ourselves, we get stuck in a circle. It’s only through the context of the other person that we reach true understanding. 

That’s why it’s so important to get out of our heads and verbalize our thoughts and feelings and ideas with other people. The social mirrors automatically surface the weaknesses and complexities of our own thinking. By using our words, the audience shows us what’s wrong with our thinking and what’s right with it. 

This concept plays out in musical performance all the time. When the composition phase of a tune is complete, that doesn’t mean the song is finished. Quiet the contrary. It’s just starting the journey of finding out what kind of song it was born to become. 

Stipe, the lead singer of the most successful alternative rock band in history, says that the real song only emerges during live performance. Because unlike singing into a hairbrush in the hotel bathroom, now there’s actually an audience to receive the music. A social mirror to reflect back the song’s true potential. A backboard against which the artist bounces his original idea and, in return, receives a more evolved version of what he started out with. 

That’s the divine gift of the other. The space between us is generative and holy. 

And so, whatever you’re thinking and feeling, whatever ideas are running through your brain, don’t keep them to yourself for too long. Because connectedness is the only frame in which we healthily and successful regulate. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What are you keeping to yourself that needs to come out? 

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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