If all you give people are facts, they will take note and move on with their lives.
Give them a story they can feel and relate too, and you will have their long-term attention.
Give them empathy for their own story, and you will have them ready to change their behaviour.
Not succeeding does not necessarily mean failing.
Not being right does not necessarily mean being wrong.
Not being good does not necessarily mean being bad.
Not agreeing with something does not necessarily mean opposing it.
We use categories to make sense of the world, yet categories are not dichotomies. If anything, their meaning is much better understood with a Greimas square.
Be aware of contradictions and implications, not only of contraries, when you are trying to understand what’s going on.
“Chiacchiere da bar” (that literally translates into “bar talk”) is an idiomatic expression we use in Italy when the conversation derails from the specificity of one’s domain. It’s the typical case in which people feel they would be better at managing a football team than actual football managers, or at leading a country than actual politicians, or at manufacturing products than actual manufacturers.
You get the idea.
We all get involved in “bar talk”, some with more passion than others. Wanting to share one’s opinion is probably very human, and nowadays we do not even have to go to the bar (and risk reputation, relationships, status) to let the world know what we would do if only someone would put us in charge of the task force responsible for fighting the coronavirus crisis.
People who have deep knowledge of one or two domains are also prone to this. It’s not a matter of education, gender, profession or race. It’s just something (apparently) incredibly difficult to avoid.
Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that “bar talk” is a choice.
Sending yet another uninformed tweet or getting tangled in yet another bottomless comment section are actions we can avoid. We could spare the time, the energy, the passion for what really matters.
And of course, this begs the question.
What does really matter (to you)?
We are not in search of perfection, and yet we demand ourselves to produce perfection.
The expectations we put on our work are often way higher than those our audience has. This happens in part because we often idealize our audience – and here’s a reminder of how important it is to truly get to know those you are serving. But it also happens because perfect gives us a reason to not deliver, to postpone, to keep thinking and refining.
Accepting far from perfect is not a way to excuse our poor job, rather it is the only possible route to shipping.
Dissatisfaction lies in the difference between what’s around us and how we would like that to be. And of course, the only thing we can reliably change over time is the latter.
Our partner is not going to become more loving because we want them to. Our boss is not going to become a better one because we read a book about leadership. We are most likely not going to be successful in the vast majority of pursuits we undertake and average is going to be our natural habitat. Rainy days are still going to follow shiny sunny ones, and they are going to hurt more. The people we surround ourselves with will continue to pursue their lives paying us little attention and giving us little credit. We are probably never going to be loved as much as we love (mainly because we only feel one of the two), and others are always going to hurt us more than we hurt them (for the same exact reason).
That is life.
It does not get any better than this. Except, sometimes it does. And until we are ready to look at it for what it is, in its entirety and free from all of our expectations and demand, we won’t be ready to welcome whatever positive change it is going to bring.
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