Are you projecting the wrong image of yourself? People do it all the time. It can be on purpose or just a result of years of just assuming a certain role. You find a comfortable place in acting or feeling a certain way and you kind of just stay there, often with no rhyme or reason.
You're the life of the party, so you keep up that image by putting on a front of being the loudest and drunkest person in the room. You're the lovable loser...always projecting the loser part. You're the guy who is mad at the world and you feed off of everyone trying to cheer you up. You're the "find the negative in everything girl". You're known for the negatives and you will always be painted into that corner. People around you will change and one day you will find yourself acting a part for the sake of acting the part; surrounded by a different group of people because everyone else has changed or moved forward, but your negative legacy lives on.
If you walk around with a chip on your shoulder, people may try to knock it off or feed into that chip. You are giving others a target that allows them to characterize you as something or treat you in a certain way. Yes, you need to be known for something in life, but is this the thing that you want people to use to describe you? You obviously lack depth in personality if people can't describe you beyond that chip. You also use the chip as a life crutch and fear sharing anything beyond that chip carrying experience or personality front you keep projecting.
If you go through life looking damaged, wronged or harmed, people will treat you as such. I'm not saying you need to mask your feelings or put up a good front. If there is anything in this world I wish people would be better at is the sharing of those feelings. People don't embrace sad, cold or lifeless people. They pity them. We are all drawn to passionate individuals who care about the world and people around them. Charisma and passion are important in attracting people to you. Yet, if you constantly carry yourself as damaged or broken, the attention you receive will always be pity. People may befriend you, but only because they need someone sadder or more broken than they are. Nobody wants to date the saddest person in the room and pity sex only really happens in the movies.
We naturally size people up when we first meet them. What is this person all about? What makes them tick? This person is magnetic and I need to know why. If you have charisma, you can light up a room. If you are a sad sack, you can bring down the mood really quick and eventually find yourself sitting all alone in the elementary school lunchroom of life.
I know people that, in the first few minutes of meeting them, tell you their sad life story. They just cough it up. Out of some strange insecurity, they just need you to know how terrible it's been for them and that the room needs to pay attention to them because they are so fragile or whatever. They assume, because the person they are meeting is so happy, that they can competitively out "sad sack" the other guy. It's pretty amazing to watch honestly.
We all have baggage of some sort that would make us candidates for being Debbie Downer, but some of us just decide to be positive and not let these negative experiences define us. I'm not suggesting you mask your pain for the sake of public appeal. Confront your issues and baggage and don't allow those things to negatively define you. Stop being and acting wounded to gain attention for all the wrong reasons. Remove the chip off your shoulder and don't make yourself a target. Emoting negative baggage is a crutch and crutches should only be used by people who truly are injured.
#pullthetrigger. #getup how do you want to be treated? People with baggage. Pull the trigger. Get up.
It's not as fun or as exciting as it was years ago. Seeing it through new eyes versus filtered, scarred and experience-filled eyes, tends to alter and warp what was once perceived to be "perfect" or "beautiful". No matter how hard you swim against the tide and swing at the windmills Don Quixote style, it will never truly change the progression of things. Good or bad, things evolve and you are either tasked with the challenge of steering them into the future or become the anchor that will eventually be severed by the ship of progress- regardless if you agree with that progress.
Things have to change. They have to evolve. Even if evolution is eventually the thing that kills the industry. Dinosaurs were going to become extinct regardless. You can sit on the sidelines and tell everyone "I told you so", but you and I both know that nothing good will ever come of that. Even if you are right, nobody will remember you being right in the months to come. They will be trying their best to look for something positive to sell and troubleshooting to the point to where it covers the tracks of mistakes that were made along the way. You may be right, but progress will trump you.
In the end, what truly is "right"?
So what are you going to do? You cannot sit and long for the ways it once was. You can I guess, but it will do you absolutely no good. You are not going to wake up one day and see it all just fall in line with your beliefs. You can't give up and cling to whatever you are comfortable with in an effort to stretch your time. You can't throw stones at progress and expect karma to just skip you in the process. The world is not designed to adapt to you.
You adapt. You climb. You play the game and feed the catalysts of this progress with smart, well timed and thought out questions. You plant seeds of big picture thought and momentum and not seeds of doubt. You water those thoughts and ideas with reminders and not with complaints riddled with negativity. You move forward with progress and time out your "attack" on the establishment. This is not one of those moments where you jump ship, start out on your own and use all of your energy to regress and attempt to turn back the time on progress so that things remain familiar. You can fight technique and direction, but progress, momentum and evolution will never be trumped or overpowered.
The world moves forward and so should you. If you move on your own, you will never have to worry about being drug along or run over by progress.
A while back I replaced the battery in my 1965 Chevy truck. I attached the cables, sat down in the cab and turned the engine over. After a couple of attempts, the engine cranked and Bessie (that's her name) started up. As I put my foot on the gas pedal, I decided to turn up the radio. Yes, it's a sweet Alpine stereo with a cassette option hooked up to 2 cheap speakers from the early 90s. I didn't install this "booming system", it came with the truck when I bought it off of Ebay a few years ago. Try not to be jealous.
The song that came on, starting from the first note as I turned on the radio, was "Sweet Child Of Mine" by G-N-R. If you are too young to know the song, I am sorry. I'm not going to write a paragraph on the history of the band. Let's just say, a good stretch of my adolescence was spent trying to scream and hold the word "home" as I sang "Paradise City". You know I'm not alone and you are doing this in your head as we speak.
Some of the best memories from childhood were of watching my brother Michael play pool and video games at the Eagles Nest. It was a fast food restaurant/arcade that was right across from the high school we went to in Johnson City, Texas. Like the coolest guy in the world, my brother Michael would slide a few quarters in the jukebox, grab a pool stick and break the rack almost to the beat of "Sweet Child of Mine". Like Axl Rose grabbing the mic to sing, my brother began to run the table; knocking ball after ball into the pocket as he chalked his cue while constantly surveying the table, looking for his next shot. All the while, mouthing the words to the song. Straight out of a movie. Some people had The Fonz or Tom Cruise. I had Michael James Francis Murphy-the coolest mother fucker on the planet.
I couldn't help but tear up, smile and laugh at the same time. As I revved the engine on my old Chevy truck, I could feel my brother sitting next to me in the passenger seat. Believe in God, don't believe in God, that's your call. My brother was with me at that moment, giving me some sort of reassurance and reminding me how important music was and still is in our relationship.
When we were kids, we devised ways of screwing over Columbia House with those "16 albums for a penny" deals. With every penny sent in under a different fake name, our music collection grew. We never paid for the 2 albums you were supposed to buy at regular price. I'm sure the Murphy kids were the ones that put that place out of business!
I can sync up most of my childhood memories with a song or an artist. I'm sure you can too. A few examples....my dad insisting that we serenade my mom on Friday nights with Beatles songs and the perfectly choreographed Murphy kid version of "Breaking up his hard to do" by Neil Sedaka. At age 8, I was the only kid allowed to move the needle on the record, when my father would have a few drinks and insist on listening to Hoyt Axton songs as loud as the speakers could go. Perhaps the start of my DJ career? Washing the truck in Iowa, while listening to "Guitar Town" by Steve Earle and "End of the line" by The Traveling Wilburys on repeat. County road hood surfing to "California Girls". My brother and I were shocked one day when my dad came home and made us go buy a song he saw/heard on MTV during his lunch break. The song? "Fight for your right (to party)" by the Beastie boys. Dad liked rap music?! We didn't question it, we just seized the opportunity to rock out with our dad and add another song to the collection.
That list doesn't even scratch the surface on the importance of music and how we grew up. The songs don't need to be grand or meaningful with lyrics, as long as they connect with you and a certain period of your life. Like many people in radio, I can hear a song from the past 20 years (about the length of my radio career) and tell you where I was working when I first played it on the radio.
Girlfriends each had a song attached to them-and it wasn't always "our song". Sometimes, it was a breakup song or a song that maybe they don't know that we attached to them ("I used to love her, but I had to kill her").
Songs change in meaning as you get older and life changes. Songs that were written with the original intent of how a guy feels about a woman, change after you have kids. I still have songs that make me think of my wife but, but since becoming a father, I have found more songs remind or cause me to reflect upon my children.
There are those songs that will always remind me of my brother. He will always and forever be tethered to all things G-N-R, but I can't help but change the gender of the lyrics in the song to reflect my brother and how much we all miss him.
"She's got a smile it seems to me
Reminds me of childhood memories
Where everything
Was as fresh as the bright blue sky
Now and then when I see her face
She takes me away to that special place
And if I'd stare too long
I'd probably break down and cry"
Axl Rose may have been a son of a bitch, but he sure could write a song.
You can have all the gunpowder, ability and torque in the world, but if you lack the target, the bullseye, the ambition or drive necessary to funnel and push that talent; then you and everyone else will never discover your potential.
There are people who spend much of their life spinning their wheels. They build up energy and ability, but never seize the opportunity to execute. To put that energy into motion. Instead, it's safer to keep that ability under wraps or just as bad, they lack the confidence to show it off.
Everyone loves an underdog story. None of us really believe, as individuals, that we are the king of the castle. Sure, you can be part of a dominate team or group of successful people, but deep down inside there's a loser in all of us. A wimp. A big sissy baby. An outsider.
You will never be discovered or live up to your potential because you will never dare to share anything worth exposing. Our abilities remain untapped and unseen because we haven't been noticed by the group. Hiding from the world is easy to do. At some point, you are going to have to put yourself out there. Grow past your insecurities and live up to the underdog billing. The only difference between the underdog and a loser is finishing the job.
Defeat Goliath. Slay the dragon. Put yourself out there.