Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously

Too Seriously to Enjoy Life

Today I am back on the bandwagon about taking yourself too seriously. Quit it.

My passion in life is helping people find their confidence and also teaching organizations how they can create a Culture of Confidence™.

One of the constants that I encounter is people taking themselves too seriously. So, what do I mean by that?

How Important Are We, Really?

There is a tendency to act as though everything we do is really important and that the result of what we do is significant.

In some ways it may be. The truth, though, is that the universe of people each of us affects on a daily basis is infinitesimally small. In the big picture, most of us are not even blips in the history of mankind.

It Is Liberating

Now some of you are going to read this and be angry about that fact. To me it is totally liberating.

When I first started in my career as an attorney I spent a lot of time worrying about what others would think if I lost a trial. Certainly, my clients would be disappointed. But I was concerned about what other people, you know other lawyers and judges, would think.

It Doesn’t Matter What Others Think

First of all it really didn’t matter what they thought. I did the best I could with the facts I had and that is all anyone can ask. Second of all, there were not that many people who really cared what I was doing. I was not the subject of a lot of conversation, anyway.

As I matured in the legal field I ran across younger lawyers who were having the same thoughts. It seemed silly to me that they were thinking that way. So, if it was silly for them to think that way, why wasn’t it silly for me?

Who Designed the Cathedral of Notre Dame

Then one day I was at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It is more than 600 years old, is visited by millions of people and known around the world. Yet I did not know one thing about any person who was involved in the design or construction of that building.

It got me to thinking. Nothing I am doing is so important that people will be thinking or talking about it 600 years from now. I am sure there were people who worked on the Notre Dame Cathedral who got all bothered over some mistake they made at that time. But in reality, 600 years later, who even knows?

Who Cares?

Not taking myself too seriously has been a blessing. It is very liberating. It even allows me to sit down at the computer and crank out this blog post without worrying whether people will think it is worthy. I don’t care. I am just enjoying myself and I encourage you to do the same.