Who made you what you are?
Forty years ago my boss told me something; I’ve remembered it ever since. It’s been the single most inspiring thing anyone ever said to me:
“I don’t think you’ve got any idea what your potential is”
Not what I was used to
My boss’s name was Jack Philpott, and he was my sales manager at an earthmoving equipment company. I was an eighteen-year-old trainee, and he was a respected industry veteran. Everybody looked up to Jack.
I’d done something stupid but rather than chew me out, Jack just expressed his exasperation, couching it in terms of his disappointment at what he felt was my wasted talent. Notwithstanding my dumb-assery, I was ready to listen: I wanted to do well in the job and there could be no-one better to learn from, no better example. I see now that Jack also represented a powerful father figure, one quite different to my actual father.
I don’t have memories of getting praise, encouragement or direction at home, growing up. And I didn’t realise what I’d been missing until I kind of got all three indirectly in that one sentence.
A double-edged sword
It’s hard to live up to high expectations. And Jack was right in the sense that I didn’t have a clear idea of what my strengths were, or what I should do to make the best use of my abilities. So that makes what he said one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever heard too: what exactly is my potential and how do I unlock it?
Sometimes I’ve found helpful answers to those questions. I’ve made myself the right person, put myself in the right place, at the right time, everything has lined up and I’ve been successful.
But even in less victorious times, remembering that someone I looked up to knew I could do better, has kept me going. Life’s a journey, huh?
The Mosaic Challenge
“We’re all one, we’re all connected, and every experience we have makes up the beautiful mosaic that is our lives. What’s your mosaic?”
- Gurratan, TikTok, 2021
The #mosaicchallenge on TikTok a few years ago was an invitation to tell others about things you do because of modelling the behaviours or advice of people that have been important figures in your life. Many of the things that get described are idiosyncratic or even ritualistic but almost always a product of love and respect. This makes the describing of them touching and sometimes even profoundly moving.
It’s a special act of honour to family, friends and ancestors that you routinely do something in your everyday life because of the impact they had on you.
Here are a few simple behaviours and their sources that spring to mind for me:
- I try to be more efficient by combining tasks wherever I can because that’s what my Nanna did — she called it dovetailing.
- I let the tool do the work when I’m sawing — I don’t put pressure on the saw because my Grandad taught me it’s too tiring to do that all day.
- I deliberately look into each side-turning when I’m riding my motorcycle because my instructor told me it would get me into the habit of turning my head early to do that, and that might save my life one day.
- I’m relaxed when I’m reading an educational book because my best friend’s Dad taught me that if I only took one good idea away from the material and put it into practice, that would mean the time I spent was worthwhile.
And here are some more from other people (not always serious):
- “I give away books that I’ve already read, as birthday presents, because I had a teacher who once said there’s no more personal gift than a used book” — @katelumpkin
- “One time I read in an email signature that you can’t believe everything you think, so I don’t.” — @twithunch
- “I go №2 really slowly because my highschool Biology teacher once told us a story about how her husband tried to rush it and blew out his anus. That sounded really scary.” — @parodymom
- “I listen to music from the moment I get up to the moment I go to sleep because my Mom always played music for us as kids and it made me really happy and she would dance with us.” — @lizfieser
Moulding
Genes make some of our behavioural traits similar to our ancestors and our family members but our environment makes us different. See Behavioural Genetics — Wikipedia
Things that you do because of modelling the behaviours or advice of other people, represent how they have moulded you in some aspect of their behavioural likeness.
Get Simon Birkby’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Moulding takes place where we see someone modelling behaviour that we don’t presently exhibit but that we admire and then we make a conscious decision to emulate that behaviour.
The differences in our characters and our behaviours then, express our environmental heritage, in the same way our physical appearance and capabilities are because of the expression of the genes we inherited. We’re the product of our ancestors, so will be the people around us.
But where our genetic heritage stretches back hundreds of thousands of years into the past, our behavioural inheritance is mostly much more recent: one or two generations, three at most. Because in this context we can only inherit what we see and hear being modelled, with our own eyes and ears.
And because we inherit what we see, we can do that from outside of our families too — from what we see in our peers, teachers, co-workers, people on social media, celebrities and even fictional characters.
Crucially, we also have a choice over what we inherit — if we don’t like what we see or hear, we can reject it. In fact, sometimes our characters and our behaviours are the opposite of what was modelled for us, because of the need we felt to distance ourselves from what didn’t sit well with us.
So it’s a universal reversible, negotiable process, and a chain reaction: everyone can mould us — directly or in reverse; we each can mould everyone around us too.
How can we mould others by our own modelling?
“Fear not, my lord, we will not stand to prate;
Talkers are no good doers: be assured
We come to use our hands and not our tongues”
‘The First Murderer’ — Richard III, Shakespeare
Simple. Nobody enjoys getting lectured. So don’t talk the talk, walk the walk. Show up the way you would have others show up, embody the behaviour you believe in.
Ah, but what is it that is exemplary in your book?
What are your standards?
It can be a lot of work to define them, when you stop to think about it. Maybe that’s why we cleave to ideologies, creeds and religions — because they provide spiritual ready-meals, off the peg life philosophy. Nothing wrong with a shortcut, sometimes.
One secular example I like is the poem ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling (link), written in 1895 and listing sixteen principles. It’s a product of its time though, something it has in common with religious texts. So I prefer this more modern interpretation by Anne Dalk from 2007 (link), as another set of sixteen similar ideas, more relevant to the present day. Still quite a lot to keep in your head though.
In pursuit of simplification
Whilst Buddhism compresses the principles for a happy and giving existence down to eight concepts, in the Noble Eightfold Path, the Toltecs, a culture that ruled in Tula, Mexico, from AD 950 to 1150, apparently got it down to four. That feels more manageable to me.
In his 1997 book The Four Agreements, the Mexican author Don Miguel Ruiz describes the Toltec philosophy as a set of pacts that we can all make with ourselves, for happier and more successful lives:
- Be impeccable with your word
- Take nothing personally
- Do not make assumptions
- Always do your best
Conclusion
Considering the effect that moulding has on us all, I think we have a responsibility to try to consciously model our best selves. This means we have to be mindful of how we’re showing up to the world and that we be deliberate in choosing the standards and principles we want to live up to.
I can recommend the Four Agreements as a starting point. I learned about them in 2018 and I’ve worked with them weekly ever since, in groups where mindfulness and accountability were (metaphorically) sacred. I think they work very well. The book is inexpensive if bought new; widely available for even less secondhand and at under 100 pages, quick to read.
