When your spotlight flickers

If life happens to give you the opportunity to walk on a stage with a gleaming beam of light on your head, you will most likely rub your hands to wipe the sweat from your palms.

Your eyeglasses will magically slide to the tip of your nose and you will have to push them back onto your face. Your insides will jiggle. Your unhurried arm movements will exhibit a body language that resembles a sloth. Your voice will be tainted with an unusual pitch as you take a deep breath before your first sentence.

Being under the spotlight doesn’t mean you’re doing great.

In fact, being in the spotlight just means there are more people aware of every move you make. Your chances of screwing up increase exponentially.

A spotlight will bring full attention to what you do in real-time, not on what you’ve done in the past. Your previous efforts, the ones that actually put you in the public light, will suddenly feel irrelevant.

The spotlight is on!

You begin your performance. Singing. Dancing. Speaking. Walking. Perhaps directing! For a brief moment, you gallantly wreck your ropes and take full control of the scenario. It is dazzling when you have a shining light on top of you. Even your face becomes lustrous. The sweat on your forehead might make you sparkle a bit more, but it doesn’t matter, because it feels beautiful.

On stage, you resolve your way through the scene and arrive at a climax with full control of what you’re doing. You’re a colossal winner that closes the act with a fanfare. The whole room resonates with applauses.

You conclude a moment that you want to cherish for longer. But you can’t.

It all lasted a blink, in the eyes of the universe. Yet, for one second, the vortex of all the admiration in the room, was you. For the spotlight, there was no one else to shine onto. For the audience, there was nothing more important than you.

Sometimes, said room is small. Sometimes it’s gigantic. It could be your bedroom. A theatre. A company.

Said spotlight might be a real one. Or it might be a dimly lit candle on a birthday cake. It could be your writing lamp. Your camera flash. Your computer’s display.

Said audience might be a thousand people. Or a single individual.

As memorable as a moment of fame is, what you actually learn from it, is far more important. Knowledge lasts longer than most lights.

The main lesson for most individuals who have been under a bright light, and being the center of attention, is that the spotlight itself is irrelevant. The room is equally unimportant, for the world is far too small to be walled.

What really matters at the end is your audience. Those who admire you for who you are and for what you do. Your peers, your bosses, your employees, your family, your loved ones. They will be the balancing elements on the scale for you to be successful.

Everybody says “The most important person is you.” But they’re wrong. We’re not meant to be individual beings doing stuff on our own. We’re meant to be part of something far larger than what words can describe. Far more complex than what rules dictate. More dynamic than trends.

Build trust. Do excellent work. Be transparent.
Be part of something bigger than you.

The biggest lesson here is, when your spotlight flickers, rejoice and continue moving on, because that spotlight is not worth your time and devotion.

For a light to exist, first you need a dark room. Once it shines again, your sweat will be gone. Your eyeglasses will stamp on place. Your body will breeze. Your voice will be grand.

Do not panic in the dismal room. If you need to move in the dark, find your way to a light switch, not to an exit door.