By Steve Moran
It is Easter morning, and I am sitting and watching the movie Mending the Line — a story about about a group of very broken people who find peace fly-fishing on the rivers of Montana.
It is a powerful, poignant story that reminds me of how much of a mess we human beings are in spite of how perfect we look on social media and at conferences.
Look at All the Perfect People.
I watched the movie just a few days after returning from a perfect conference that was held at a perfect luxury resort in a perfect luxury location.
More than that …
All the people attending were perfect too: senior living operators who are getting it all right, making the world better for residents, residents’ families, and team members. They are all wildly financially successful.
It is not just the owners and operators, it is also the solution providers who all have amazing, successful solutions that are solving big problems at a reasonable cost.
And Then There Is Me …
I am amazed that they let me in, because I am a mess. I struggle every day to try to sort of get it right. I go to these conferences and have conversations with these perfect people who have amazing self-confidence, and then I go back to my room at night and wonder what things I said that were really stupid.
I put my hand up to ask a question and worry that my question is dumb. Or even worse, I put my hand up and don’t get to ask a question and think, it was because they didn’t want to hear a dumb question.
I get invited out to a fancy restaurant and wonder if I am doing it right, ordering right, using the right fork, talking too much or too little.
I wonder if I am talking to the right people, asking the right questions.
We Are All a Mess.
If only we could peel back the mask ….
It is hard, really impossible, to know exactly how we are perceived by others. It occurs to me that from the outside, my life looks a lot more perfect than I know it to be. I also know that I have met a lot of people who were pretty perfect, and then when I got to know them better, I realized they had their own struggles or challenges.
We go to conferences, we go online, and we want to look good. Even when we get a little vulnerable, we are careful to not go too far with that vulnerability, and this is a good thing. We have all experienced times where someone has overshared, and it is not good for them or anyone else, and something I am NOT going to do in this article.
But in truth, we are all a mess. We have insecurities; we have egos that are fragile; we want to make a difference; we don’t want to hurt. We want joy, meaning, and happiness, and that often seems elusive. Even great financial success and high public acclaim does not mean one is not a mess.
It in fact brings its own challenges — unique challenges — not the least of which is that no matter what our success, we are still stuck with being who we are.
If you feel not quite good enough, like you don’t really fit in, remember that perfect person with great success standing onstage or across the room or who snubbed you is dealing with their own stuff.
