Guy Reams (00:00.888)
This is Day 265, Mistaking Encouragement for Praise.
Many young professionals make the mistake of taking encouragement as praise. I was guilty of this myself. I am not exceptionally talented in any particular way. Probably if I have any base attribute, it would be curiosity. I'm reminded of a time early in my career when I was working for a computer training company. I got hired as an instructor and it was common for this
group of classroom computer instructors to stand around outside and talk during breaks. One of these seasoned trainers was a retired helicopter pilot who had served a stint in Vietnam. He was as you would expect, sarcastic, full of backhanded cynicism, and more than willing to tell you story or two. I wanted to fit in, so I would hang out with him and complain about the world.
One day as we were standing there, our manager came up to the group and asked, does anyone know Mac OS? We have a new class that we need to offer. No one was stupid enough to raise their hand, but I was. You see, I was ambitious and I thought very highly of myself. People had always said that I was smart and highly capable. They said that I was going to be successful and that I was incredibly gifted for such a youngster.
I sort of knew the Mac OS only because I was born in the early seventies. You see, I've been around for all of the Apple resurgences from the Apple two to the iPhone. I've had this love hate relationship with the company. So yes, I knew the Mac OS. The time of this question was in the early nineties and the Mac OS had been around since 1984. So I raised my hand after the manager left the former helicopter pilot shook his head and laughed.
Guy Reams (02:00.066)
You have a lot going for you kid, not because you're special, but because you're young. I was just like you once. Why don't you go spend your nights and weekends learning Mac OS 7? We'll talk again when they announce Mac OS 10 or something else. He was right. I spent a ton of time learning Mac OS to impress my boss. I never did teach that class and this seasoned veteran was right. Version 10 called X was a complete and total departure from the previous versions.
I had to learn all over again, except this time I was a few years older and had taken a few sips from the cynicism bucket myself. I learned in that moment as he put his cigarette out on the wall and headed back in to teach his Netwear C &E course that all the compliments that had just been heaped on me for years were just adults encouraging me. I was not special. I was just like this old guy taking a break from teaching my computer class.
He was teaching people how to replace mainframes that he had installed when he was my age. And he was right. In 30 years, I would be teaching people how to get rid of open systems that I'd been learning to install in the 90s. Sure enough, that is exactly what happened. I've had more than one wild-eyed kid tell me excitedly about a new technology and how awesome it is. And although I share their enthusiasm, I know the truth. Your advantage is not that you can learn fast. Your advantage is that you are young.
You see, we want to believe that we are exceptional, special, a unique bright spot in a sea of dollars. The development of our ego creates this for us and it is ultimately a good thing. I got bullied a lot growing up, so my defense mechanism was to become wickedly smart. I would outthink them, and I'm pretty sure that I did. However, that was not special, and the two kids that bullied me ended up growing up into adults just like me.
There was nothing too exceptional about them and there was really nothing exceptional about me either. They were just bigger and older and had fun picking on the smart ass new kid in the neighborhood. My ego was built around my ability to read and digest information and outsmart other people. Teachers would praise my reading level and express enthusiasm about my knowledge of so many things at such a young age. There was nothing special and unique about this. I was just motivated to read.
Guy Reams (04:24.217)
because I was never going to survive on the football field or in shop class. Now there may be an occasional savant that is born with some miraculous ability, but that is extremely rare. Most people are not born with any incredible and unique talent that marks them above any other human. We tend to believe this because we are told this and then our ego defends it as we grow up. The reality is that we are all more alike than we want to admit.
and we all develop in remarkably similar ways. Adults provide encouragement because that is what young people need as they develop. Note that when you get to a certain age, that encouragement stops and now you become competition. The praise stops rather suddenly when you can no longer be used to teach that macOS class. When you are wise to the fact that you are going to get paid the same no matter what,
and that the macOS course will never get any students because no one wants to take a macOS 7.1 course anyway. Although you are not born a superstar like Taylor Swift and you're not a next level genius like Elon Musk, you actually are special in the fact that you are human. We as a species are quite incredible, really. That alone is enough to provide you with the confidence that you can do just about anything you set out to achieve.
The danger is that you really start to believe that somehow you are special because of all the praise you received as a child. And you translate that into your work ethic. You start to believe that things you ought that will all you was that you start to believe that all things will be handed to you because that is what has always happened. That old helicopter pilot turned computer teacher taught me a profound lesson that morning. Be careful not to believe the hype. The praise people have dumped on you for most of your life is encouragement.
not some evidence of your natural born talent. The reality is that if you want something in life and you are old enough to be competition for other adults, you're gonna have to work for it.