Nobody’s Listening.
It’s okay to not be okay. There’s nothing more exhausting than having to pretend to everyone around you that everything is always okay.
When I first started thinking about writing something like this it was purely from a perspective of working in startups but really, this is applicable everywhere.
So often both on social media and in person, we are creating such a horrible pressure for people to put on a front that everything is going brilliantly.
“Fake it until you make it” they say. What a ridiculous phrase.
As James Routledge’s article put it, “Nobody cares mate” — at least not as much as you do.
But imagine this for a moment:
Wouldn’t it be great if you could be open and honest about the challenges you’re facing, just a little bit more than you are now?
It’d be a whole lot easier if we gave people the chance to actually be honest when we’re asking questions. Right now 99% of conversations seemed to go something like this:
“Hey, how’s [insert startup, job, relationship] going, you look like you’re smashing it?!”
“You must be so happy, it looks like you’re really taking off with [insert startup, job, relationship]!”
These questions are just propping up the pretence and only giving room for one type of answer. It doesn’t give you any room to be anything other than at least 90% positive.
It’s why startups can often prefer the company of other startups, there’s this dark kind of humour that develops. It’s another great benefit of all the co-working spaces that now exist because yes there’s a healthy competition but you also don’t have to bullshit one another. If it’s falling apart then it’s falling apart but when it’s going well, it’s going really well and you know just how much they will have worked for it.
Even then, it doesn’t mean we’re that honest with each other in startups. This summer, a friend of ours visited us in our workspace we spent most of the afternoon talking about the startups we were running, how it was going and the room for some collaboration between what we were doing in the future. All seemed well but a month later, he contacted us to let us know he was quitting the business he’d founded and that actually he’d been covering up how difficult it was. We’d been doing the exact same with him.
All I’d ask, is that the next time you’re talking to anyone about their startup, project, job, degree, whatever it is, think about it and give that person a chance to be honest with you. Who knows what might come of it.
Personally I’ve had a rough few months, with a business winding down [that story can wait until another day], having to move back home and then my relationship ending. Many friends have also been through some really difficult personal stuff and this same theme kept reappearing.
There’s nothing more exhausting than having to pretend to everyone around you that everything is always okay.
Sometimes you just have to be kinder to yourself and others around you.
So in short, here’s what I’m trying to say: If you’re having a horrible time, don’t feel like you can’t say it.
If you’re asking someone how they are, please think for a moment longer beforehand… “Am I actually giving them the space to be honest?” If not, then you’re probably wasting each other’s time.
Given the way things have panned out in 2016 (I mean WTF…), so much of the confusion and bemusement about what’s happened and why is surely down to, in part, the fact that we’ve just not been listening.
I know a lot of these themes seem similar to the message coming from mental health charities and the Time to Talk campaign too. I think the latest stats are that 1 in 4 of us in the UK will at some point have a mental illness, for many it may be that they will always have it.
