PANDEMIC DIARY
NEVER UNDERVALUE YOURSELF
October 6, 2020
Never let it be said that I am unwilling to ‘borrow’ ideas or stories when they accrue to some benefit. In a now famous interview, Dick Cavett asked Mike Nichols, the great film director of movies like “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “The Graduate”, who he was influenced by. Nichols huffed his response, “Influence me? You mean ‘who did I steal from’? No one borrows from or is influenced by another artist. They steal. They take what’s there and build upon it. That’s the ‘art’ part. How you build on what’s already there. That’s how we learn and grow.”
I saw this lovely story in a LinkedIn post that I would like to pass on:
“A father said to his daughter, “You have graduated with honors, here is a car I bought many years ago. It is pretty old now. But, before I give it to you, take it to the used car lot downtown and tell them I want to sell it and see how much they offer you for it.”
The daughter went to the used car lot, returned to her father and said “They offered me $1,000 because they said it looks pretty worn out.”
The father said, “Now, take it to the pawn shop.” The daughter went to the pawn shop, returned to her father and said, “The pawn shop offered me only $100 because it is an old, run down car.”
The father asked his daughter to go to a car club now and show them the car. The daughter then took the car to the club, and returned and told her father, “Some members of the club offered $100,000 for it because it’s a Nissan Skyline R34, it’s an iconic car and sought by many collectors.”
Now, the father said this to his daughter, “The right place values you the right way. If you are not valued, do not be angry, it means you are in the wrong place. Those who know your value are those who appreciate you. Never stay in a place where no one sees your value.”
I very much related to this story. As a young man I felt deeply each rejection. I might have reflected that the used car salesman was better than me, or the pawn broker simply trying to take advantage of me. I operated as if something was not right with me and I was at the effect of others. Those judgments did not serve me and they were not accurate profiles of the other people either. Each was doing his job. Their behavior had little, if anything, to do with me.
My epiphany came some years later when I was interviewing for a sales management position. I was brought into an office, sat opposite the desk of a positioned person who immediately struck me as full of himself. We talked for maybe a few short minutes, not really long enough to get any true sense of who I was or my capabilities, when he literally shoved some piece of shit on his desk towards me, maybe a pen and pencil holder or a sharpener, and said leaning back in his chair like some tycoon, “Here, sell this to me.”
I immediately felt sullied and dirty. What was this, performance art? An entertainment for his sole enhancement? My mind was operating at a furious pace jostling between “Fuck you” to accommodating him for the sake of getting hired. But, this was the new me. I said, “You haven’t asked me a single question about my experience or competencies. I admit, that is not the total picture, however, there is no way I am going to do a trained seal act for you to satisfy your neurotic need to embarrass and humiliate. All you’ve demonstrated to me is that you are not worth hiring.” At which point, I ceremoniously gathered my materials into my attache case (remember those) and on the way out smiled and said, “I just sold myself in case you missed it.”
I called up my then girlfriend and took her out to lunch.
There were two people at the table that valued me.
I was glad to be one of them.