Episode 96 – The Disdain of the Illegitimate

This is Rebecca Clark. Episode 96. The disdain of the ill legitimate Yeah, this’ll podcast is for anyone that knows they haven’t yet found and offered up their best work but are compelled to seek it out and do it. Are you ready to move your desk? Hello, this is Rebecca. I’m having lots of thoughts today because I’ve talked to a few people over the last few weeks that air experiencing pain and they’re experiencing it associate ID with their work. And what’s so interesting to me is it doesn’t matter if you are an entrepreneur. Doesn’t matter if you’re a corporate. Employees doesn’t matter if you’re a lifelong government worker. The same stories are coming up, and even though some of the situations are different, the thoughts and the emotions are the same. So just to start off with as an example, I’m talking with someone who is very experienced and has a lot of skills and talents, and I think most importantly, she’s grateful, and she has grit right. She’s always grateful for the next opportunity. She always rolls up her sleeves and does the work, and she is often pushed back upon for what she offers and told even that she’s being helpful. But that’s not really what’s needed at the moment or that she is helpful. But yet she’s not included in important meetings or in initiatives where she could really give the most value, right, just being thought of as helpful. And the rest of her skills are apparently not legitimate for what the need is. Another high powered woman in the corporate world continually puts her neck out there for opportunities and is told that her experience and skills are not quite the right match for the position. And yet the positions she’s applying for or initiatives she is recommending herself for are the exact initiative she has skills in. And the people that air hiring for the position or putting the teams together are the people that don’t really understand what the work is, and they don’t think that she is legitimate. Still, another entrepreneur I’ve talked with says that people around her very close in her inner circle don’t think her work is legitimate. What she’s choosing to offer is right because she’s part of a multi level marketing group, and the comments she hears is O on Lee of the people, the top make money. Oh, that’s just a joke. Oh, that’s not really something that you could make a living from. Meanwhile, she’s confused because she can’t trust her internal promptings to follow this company, to be part of it, to use the products and to sell the products because she had trusted her inner promptings before she sold the product because she used it and she used the products for long enough to realize that they were changing her life. They were changing her health and her well being, and it meant something. And so being met with these remarks and comments and judgments was a shock to her. It caused pain. She felt the disdain coming from those who thought what she was doing, what she was thinking. What she was trying to pursue was illegitimate. Well, who gets to decide what is legitimate in the work that we offer up? I have gone through lots of thoughts and feelings around this over this past year as I’ve switched up my work, and a lot of people have thoughts about that, and I internalize a lot of those, even though I coach and help others in this same area, but I experience it all the time is well, where people say that what I’m doing is not legitimate or they make other comments that lead to that same conclusion for me, right? And I often say, Well, I can choose to make anything mean what I want it to mean, But just for right now, let’s allow the pain of these comments and let’s allow that we are making it mean that people have a disdain for what we’re doing, that what we’re doing is not legitimate or that we’re not good enough for what’s needed. We’re not going in the right direction because that’s what I got coached on. And it was interesting when when I brought up the idea that people were saying or people were acting like what I was doing wasn’t legitimate, and my coach, Mary J. Walsh, wisely said, Let’s look it up right and I like doing this. I looking up these definitions and she read to me what legitimate means As an adjective, it means conforming to the law or two rules able to defend with logic or justification. A child born of parents lawfully married to each other having a title based on strict hereditary right reverb, make legitimate, justify or make lawful. And she only read to me the first part of it, conforming to the law or two rules. And it kind of took me back when she shared that with me because I thought, Wait a second. Those who know me past and present know that I’m someone who lives by certain rules or laws, like I believe in them strongly. They’re part of my belief system. Beyond those basic laws and rules that I have in my head, I am a little rogue. I like to change it up, a little bit of work. I like to approach thing from a different angle. I like to deal with things in a different way. That makes sense to me that I think is more practical and logical, right, And so if being legitimate means I’m conforming toe laws and rules, that’s okay to me. In some respects and other respects, it’s not okay because we weren’t brought here to this Earth to conform. There’s certain things we learned that it’s important as a society to conform to certain laws and rules. Thou shalt not kill Thou shalt not steal right. Those are things that in general most of us think that’s a good idea. If we can all not steal or not kill each other, there could be some relative peace in our every day. We don’t have to watch our back every minute, and we might actually be able to move beyond just looking over our shoulder all day. Right? And we might actually produce something great if we could worry about something else. Besides that, there are parts of the world right now as we speak that don’t have that luxury. And a lot of people listening to this podcast have that luxury right and they have that luxury. We have that luxury because we have chosen to conform to certain laws and rules. But there’s a point where conforming to certain laws and rules doesn’t work, and that when it comes to innovation and inspiration and creativity, you kind of have to hover the box right. That’s what I’ve heard. And I love that analogy where it’s like recognize that there is a box but don’t stay in the box but hover around it because too far away from it may not be practical for everyday living or for implementation. But do acknowledge that there is a box that there are some rules. There are some laws to conform to, but otherwise step beyond those because hovering the edge of it and finding out what’s possible is where some magic happens. New things air created, new ways of thinking are entertained, and new possibilities and solutions come about through that process. So I wanted to talk about this today to express to both sides of the coin some thoughts for those who have people that air undervaluing their work or the openly disdain their work and say it’s not credible, it’s not legitimate. Decide whether or not you want to listen to those voices. And each time those comments come in is a good time to ask yourself, Does this person really know what I’m trying to do? Do they really know what I’m capable of? Do they really understand the possibilities of this idea? Does it matter what they think? There’s so many people in our lives that we really don’t care what they think of us, but for some reason other people we do care about why do we care what they think and ask ourselves why. Sometimes it will be apparent. A sibling, a child that says this to us or a boss, and we make it mean something. And yet, if someone on the street were to say that to us or someone that we don’t think highly of, we don’t think anything of their opinion about what we’re doing. But why do we care what someone thinks that’s closest to us? Do they know more about it than we do? Often they don’t, by the way, most of time they don’t write. Sometimes the people with the strongest opinions about what we’re doing have the least idea of what we’re doing. They don’t understand it. I don’t know why that is. But that is why it is. Maybe that’s another podcast episode, right? But if you’re receiving this constant barrage of judgment, pay attention and go, why you’re making it means something. And in that ask yourself if there’s some truth to it and what you’ll find most the time is the truth ends up being not about your idea being wrong or bad, The truth ends up being that you actually believe thumb that you actually feel like you might fail or that you aren’t good enough or that you won’t actually succeed at implementing it, introducing its other people or whatever. And so check that out in yourself, because that’s a different problem than if your idea is bad, right? But that’s something you can also change. And you can change that by introducing yourself to other people that can support you or that can coach you through it, or people that understand it and can give you insights on how you can make it better. Whatever kind of work that is, or project is or skill set is you can work on that. You can push through that. All great ideas have have had to go through this barrage of negative feedback of the naysayers of the openly judgmental of the Snickers. But for those of you who are saying your work is not legitimate, let’s have a talk for a minute. How do you know what you’re talking about? How do you know what’s legitimate? Who gets to say what’s legitimate and what is not and what’s going on in your head? Do you have your own fears? Do you think you’re not legitimate because often that’s what’s going on. When we start pointing fingers were pointing figures at someone else that’s actually taking an embarrassing step or doing the hard thing, that air putting their neck out there. And because we feel inferior, we call them out. We judge, We wish we had the guts to do what they’re doing. There’s a story about the crabs and half they’re put into a bucket or container. If any one of them tries to climb out, the others will pull it back down because that one is showing what’s possible. And when one person shows what’s possible, the others may feel on the hook, right? Oh, shoot, They showed. It’s possible We can’t sit here and be comfortable. We can’t hit, sit here and give excuses. We can’t sit with the status quo now, because now someone showing it’s actually possible shoot. I’m gonna have to get toe work. Let’s pull that person down. Let’s make them look stupid. Let’s make them feel stupid. Let’s openly say you can’t do it. I don’t believe you can. This is a lose lose situation, My friends, this does us no good. I thought it was interesting the other day for a different reason. I was writing down some feelings or emotions to describe something because someone had mentioned something and we’re trying to find out the right feeling. And they said they felt like there was disdain in their family toward what they were working on and then disregarded, disrespected, disempowered. And I wrote down a whole lot more words that I don’t have in front of me. But I thought how interesting that these all start with dis, right? And a lot of us have heard growing up. Oh, man, she dissed them or he dissed her on like, yeah, you did dis thumb. You disdained, you disregarded, you disrespected you disempowered all these words that start in the same way so very interesting I have felt with personal pressure. And I’ve heard sentences from people thinking and saying that what I am choosing to do is not as legitimate as what I used to dio. And when I engage in activities right now that people are familiar with, like editing people’s resumes, doing some consulting, sharing how to deal with organizational change, those things, those air legitimate right, because we all understand what resumes are we understand what change management is. We understand what very complex contracts are. That air, actually. Ah, lot of corporate slang and mumbo jumbo much of the time, but that’s more legitimate because it conforms. It follows rules. You could make up lots of sentences in resumes and documents and deliver Bols the sound very professional and legitimate, Right? You can reference codes and sections and other laws, and this is all legitimate. Except a lot of these documents don’t do anything, and no one knows where they are. They don’t follow them, or they use them as excuses not to do something worthwhile. We are living in a new world, and I’m not talking about co vid. I’m talking about inspirational people I’ve listened to for a least 10 years that have been giving us clues that the world is changing, that the world of work, especially, is changing. We’re all free agents. We’re all consultants, were all people that have to continuously learn and grow. And Seth Godin would say this over and over years ago, and I remember reading it and realizing I need to be aware of this. He’s like the Industrial Revolution is over my friends, it is time to step up your work. It’s time to be creative. It’s timeto offer different solutions to the world because some of the things that worked for the last 100 years or a little bit more aren’t working anymore. So you have to change it up. You do have to do something different, which means if you’re the boss, you are constantly having to learn about things so that when you choose people to help you do the work, you understand the work. And you know when you select someone that they would be someone that helps carry the work forward. But a lot of bosses aren’t doing this. They’re worried about saving their own neck. They’re worried about their own pension. They’re worried about their own bonuses and not worried about figuring out the work and figuring out how to find amazing people to do that work. And then you have some workers that air justice complacent, but cove it and these past few years are showing us that we need to change it up, and part of changing it up is changing up our mindset to realize that what is legitimate might be okay for some things, but to offer up our best work, we’re gonna be entering into that illegitimate zone, as per those who think they get to describe what legitimate ISS. But I would tell you to question, regardless of what side of this equation you are on on any given day, question yourself. What are you believing is legitimate? Because if anything, we’ve learned lately through politics and religion and news and schools and jobs is that legitimacy is really up for judgment. Right now, it’s a toss up to know what’s legitimate anymore. And so, at the end of the day, you can choose to work on your mind what you will allow into it. What you will choose to believe about yourself, what you will choose to believe from other people about you, and you get to choose what you believe about society and what society believes about you. At the end of the day, you’re in charge of yourself and sometimes a couple other people. It’s time to get the mind right and get the mind open to possibilities. There’s enough pain out there. We don’t need to help everyone create more of it for themselves. So stop accepting more pain into your life. If you’re letting the comments from people have more meaning than it should, especially if you’ve been inspired to pursue a big idea. And if you’re the one dishing out the judgment and you’re the one not believing and those around you change it up a bit, give them a chance, maybe even support them and see what happens. Maybe your mind will change. Maybe your work will improve. Maybe you’ll find out that they have a great idea, and it’s just taking a little while for that seed to grow. The capacity and capability is within us to create and contribute and grow. Let’s not stifle that in our own work and others around us. Let’s increase our awareness. Let’s notice. And instead of quickly judging, let’s be quiet and sit for a minute and go wait a second. Is that person onto something? Did they know more than I do? Would it be worth finding out what they have to bring to the table? It just might. You are legitimate, but you’re also more than that. Be more than just legitimate. Offer up your best work. Talk to you soon. If it is time for you to improve your work relationships, get the raise or move into a new career. I have two programs for you. The first is Make the Move, a self paced online course that leads you through the mindset, management principles and planning approaches that help you up level your work. The second is one on one coaching for those who are serious about transforming their work, now, find both at learn dot Move your desk dot com, yeah.