The three steps are:
Hide
Apologize
Accept
And here’s what it looks like.
Hide
For years after I graduated from Harvard I answered the question the same way most of my classmates did.
THEM: So where did you go to school, anyway?
ME: Boston.
THEM: Cool.
Eventually, I started realizing that masking is a form of self-judgment. I wasn’t confident about having attended Harvard. I was afraid to mention Harvard because I was afraid of people’s perceptions. Elite, nerdy, trust-fund kids with silver spoons, shady bankers corrupting society—whatever they were going to think, I was going to avoid. Rather than identify with this part of my identity, I hid it. I didn’t mention it in my biography, in my blog or any of my books, in any radio lead-ins, any newspaper interviews. I didn’t list my degree in my email signature at work like my coworkers.
I called this humility.
But it was fear.
After a couple years, I figured this out and decided that from then on I would tell anybody exactly where I went to school if they asked. Of course, I did this in a tentative way. An awkward way. Like dipping my toe in freezing cold water off the dock. Not really sure. How did I do it?
Apologize
THEM: So where did you go to school, anyway?
ME: (grimacing) Uh . . . Harvard?
THEM: Oh, uh, okay, haha . . . yeah, I heard of the place! Haha, uh . . .
By acting awkward, I made things awkward for others. By apologizing for myself, I forced others to apologize, too.
Eventually, I started realizing that apologizing was a form of self-judgment, too. Great, another one!
Apologizing was communicating a part of myself, then immediately sounding a bright red Family Feud triple-X buzzer through it.
“We surveyed a hundred people and the top five answers are on the board. Name a school you attended.”
“Uh . . . Harvard?”
NNNNNNN!
Apologizing avoids ownership.
Apologizing creates distance.
Apologizing suggests a mistake.
Apologizing is what you do when your dog craps on the neighbor’s lawn and then you look up and notice your neighbor watching from the window. (Sorry!)
Well, eventually I realized this, and after a couple years of apologizing I finally moved on to the third and final step.
Accept
THEM: So where did you go to school, anyway?
ME: Harvard.
THEM: Cool.
Gone went the tendency to hide the truth from others . . . which reflected my desire to hide it from myself.
Gone went the tentativeness and questioning . . . which reflected my tentativeness and questioning part of myself.
Replacing both came a clear and simple truth. Replacing both came a solid, grounded fact. By being clear and simple, without pretension, without assumptions, I consciously remove myself from any possible judgment that comes from any given statement.
This allows whatever judgment that comes to be wholly owned by the other person.
Physicist Richard Feynman said, “You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.”
Accepting yourself communicates confidence.
Accepting yourself insulates you from the washing machine of emotions that comes from other people’s views swaying your own. Swishing your thoughts. Bending your beliefs. Until they’re muddy in even your own head.
What do you do with their views? How do you stop judging yourself?
Laugh at it.
A big laugh helps you look deep, notice your self-judgments, and push through the steps to accepting part of yourself.
H—Hide
A—Apologize
A—Accept
We’re all full of self-judgments.
We’re fat, lazy, don’t exercise enough, aren’t worthy of a raise, aren’t worthy of her love, wouldn’t find another job if we were fired, wouldn’t find a new boyfriend if we were dumped. Sometimes we forget that we are all trying, trying, trying. We are all trying. We are all trying. We are all getting better.
You are what you are what you are.
Find what’s hidden, stop apologizing, and accept yourself.
9
How does Buddha use this secret?
One day Buddha was visiting a tiny village.
He had become a religious man, also called a Brahman, and was traveling from town to town to share his message. He was becoming so popular that when people heard the Buddha was coming they went to hear him speak. As a result many other Brahmans lost their audience.
One Brahman was so upset with the Buddha that he found him and went to see him late at night. He was furious! “You have no right teaching others,” he shouted. “You are as stupid as everyone else. You are nothing but a fake!”
Buddha smiled at the Brahman and listened until he was done with his rant.
When the Brahman was done, Buddha still sat, smiling at him. This made the Brahman even angrier. “Why are you just sitting there smiling? What do you have to say?”
Then Buddha spoke.
“Tell me something, Brahman: Do friends and colleagues, relatives and kinsmen, ever come to your house as guests?”
“Yes,” the Brahman answered.
“And tell me something, Brahman,” Buddha continued. “Do you serve them foods and delicacies when they arrive?”
“Yes,” the Brahman answered, “I do.”
“And tell me something, Brahman,” Buddha continued. “If they don’t accept them, to whom do those foods belong?”
“Well, I suppose if they don’t accept them, those foods are all mine.”
“Yes,” said Buddha. “In the same way, Brahman, I do not accept your anger and your criticism. It is all yours.”
The Brahman was stunned and could think of nothing to say.
His anger continued to bubble up inside him, but he had nowhere to put it.
Nobody was accepting it or taking it from him.
Buddha continued: “That with which you have insulted me, who is not insulting, that with which you have taunted me, who is not taunting, that with which you have berated me, who is not berating, that I don’t accept from you. It’s all yours, Brahman. It’s all yours.
“If you become angry with me and I do not get insulted, then the anger falls back on you. You are then the only one who becomes unhappy. All you have done is hurt yourself. If you want to stop hurting yourself, you must get rid of your anger and become loving instead.
“Whoever returns insult to one who is insulting, returns taunts to one who is taunting, returns a berating to one who is berating, is eating together, sharing company, with that person. But I am neither eating together nor sharing your company, Brahman. It’s all yours. It’s all yours.”
10
What does a message secretly hidden under Wimbledon’s Centre Court show us?
There are two lines of a poem above the player entrance to Centre Court at Wimbledon:
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same.
Picture walking down the tunnel and under that sign on your way to play in the Wimbledon final.
Sunlight beams through the entryway and you catch a glimpse of thousands filling the stands. The Royal Family is in their private box, and cameras capture your every action. Smile at your girlfriend, miss a shot and scream, sweat through your T-shirt—it’s all beamed to hundreds of millions around the world.
You have played tennis every single day for fifteen years. You picked up an old racquet as a kid and everyone said you were a natural, so you made it your life. Your parents mortgaged their house to get you private lessons. You skipped graduation and prom because of tournaments. You managed to avoid major injuries by designing your off-court life to complement tennis: no skiing, no boozing, no building decks with your hands.