I was going through Paul Graham's blog a couple of days ago and I came across an idea that I found really interesting. I obviously hadn't realized this myself before and now that I do, I really think it has changed my perspective about..well, a lot of things..
Now, the argument put forward is that most selections or judgments about you...are...umm...not about you. What this means is that most choices that people make in selecting other people in various realms of life are impersonal. Paul Graham vividly illustrates this by an example: A selector picking a football team( assuming it's from a group of non-celebrities) wouldn't quite care about who got picked and who got left out as long as he thinks that he did a good overall job with the team... i.e. margins for error are accounted for by the quality of the median.
Now if only one were to realize this, you may start to see that a lot of selections or omissions that you're involved in, which you thought were either fair or unfair.....well, they weren't about you anyway.....the person doing the selections was more concerned if he did his job well on the average.....so if you're not getting picked on a team and the average team member turns out to be good....chances are there's no use thinking the selector was unfair because he wasn't judging you personally anyway.....
Lessons to be learned? Well, for one....relax....take it easy....the world is not out to get you....for all you know...most of the time it's not even about you....and on a positive note....maybe you need to work even harder now that you know that the individual selecting you is probably not going to make too much of an effort checking up on your case.....
Well....there it is...take it as you please...but yeah...it's not about you!
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