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Awkward Is a Gift
Sebastian Thrun is, in his own words, “an odd bird.” When he was in his early teens, he spent nearly every afternoon alone in his room, programming and reprogramming a Texas Instruments TI-57 calculator that reset itself every time it was turned off. “It has fifty steps, so it memorizes keystrokes. And I programmed video games. I programmed geometric calculations and all kinds of stuff,” he recalls in a CNBC interview. “Maybe I’m socially challenged or what have you. But at a time when computers weren’t used by anybody, I came across this programmable calculator . . . And I developed a passion for lying in bed and just figuring out what can you do with fifty programming steps.”1
Sebastian’s passion for innovation and technology soon became more than a passing hobby. When he was eighteen, his best friend died tragically in a car accident. That’s when Sebastian began to dream about inventing a car that could drive itself in order to save lives needlessly lost to human error. He went on to earn a PhD in computer science and statistics from the University of Bonn in Germany, and then to become a tenured professor at Stanford. At Stanford, his dream came true: he built a self-driving car that won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, a 130-mile course across the Mojave Desert with a $2 million prize. Sebastian later helped found and lead Google X, Google’s top-secret research lab that created their self-driving cars. It was Sebastian who approached Google founder Larry Page with the vision to photograph every street in the world, better known today as Google Street View.
Sebastian’s list of projects, inventions, and initiatives is impressive, but he eventually discovered a passion beyond simply innovating in technology: educating others in technology-related fields. In 2012, he left his high-paying career to start Udacity, an online platform dedicated to bringing tech educational programs to people who otherwise would not have access to them. And he didn’t do it for the money or even the prestige. “I could be running possibly the coolest lab on the planet,” he said, “and here I am, giving up 97 percent of my salary.”2 He sums up his vision this way: “I have this dream that if we can make education globally, universally available—it doesn’t matter if you live in the Middle East, or in South America, you get the same education everywhere—then we can completely transform the world.”3
“Junior high geek” sounds more like a sitcom cliché than a description of a man who would eventually become a world-changing scientist, inventor, and educator. What took Sebastian from awkward to influential? Many things certainly contributed: innate ability, intelligence, hard work, being in the right place at the right time, and more. But one particular statement he made in an interview stood out to me. When asked to name the last time he felt dumb, he said, “Today, talking to some of our students here, I realized they are smarter than me.” Then he added, “But I love feeling dumb.”4
Part of self-leadership is accepting that you do not have to be perfect to be a leader.
That short statement says so much. It’s a window into how a creative, innovative leader thinks and how he processes his own deficiencies or awkwardness. Every leader feels dumb at times, but what you do with that feeling has the potential to make or break your leadership. Once in a while (maybe frequently), you will feel awkward, like a misfit, like you don’t measure up to expectations. That is okay. It’s actually a gift, if you know how to handle it correctly. Can you imagine how much healthier, how much more fun and relaxed, and how much more empowering leadership would be if we could all learn to enjoy the feeling of not being the smartest person in the room, rather than feeling threatened by it?
I’m not saying you don’t have to grow or change, either, but you are who you are. You can’t completely change that, and you shouldn’t try. Rather, you should lean in to the uniqueness of who you were made to be. Your “odd bird” passions and your “feeling dumb” moments simply remind you of your uniqueness.
So how is awkward a gift? (And remember, by “awkward” I mean the ways you don’t fit the mold: your quirkiness, your nerdiness, and even your shortcomings . . . or at least your shortcomings as defined by your expectations or the expectations of others.) Awkward can be a gift for one of two reasons: it can point to areas in which you are uniquely gifted, like Sebastian Thrun and his propensity for technology; and it can highlight genuine areas of lack where you need to either improve or bring others alongside you. Either way, being awkward is not something to fear, resent, or—worst of all—hide. Instead, acknowledge it. Lean into it. Learn from it. Let it help guide what you focus on or what you choose to leave for someone else.
You can only do so much; you can only be good at so many things. Discover what you are good at or could be good at, what you like, what drives you. Then leverage who you are to accomplish what only you can accomplish. You’ll never be successful at being somebody else, but you certainly can become a better version of you. And along the way, your honesty and willingness to staff your weaknesses will help others step into their potential as well.
Inferiority Complex
Being comfortable with your awkwardness is easier said than done. We might applaud Sebastian Thrun for embracing situations in which he feels dumb, but we would still prefer to avoid those moments at all costs. Why? Often, it’s because we struggle with feelings of inferiority. We secretly fear we aren’t enough, and feeling dumb seems like the last thing we need. We long to feel capable, successful, sufficient—and our inner lack of peace makes embracing awkwardness hard to do.
It was French psychologist Alfred Adler who first coined the term “inferiority complex” in the 1920s. He suggested that, since we are born into a world of adults, we start life knowing that we are smaller and weaker than those around us. He believed that these feelings should motivate us, in a positive way, toward personal growth and superior goals. However, some individuals aren’t able to get past the sense that they are smaller and weaker than those around them. Their feelings of inadequacy are amplified over time by perceived failures and frustrations, and they ultimately become crippling, which results in what Dr. Adler called an inferiority complex.5
Today, the term has become part of our everyday language, and we use it to describe a wider range of feelings than Dr. Adler’s original definition probably intended. Feeling inferior is a matter of degrees, and we all experience it to one degree or another. At some point, in some area, we hear the voices of inferiority, insecurity, and inadequacy whisper in our ears, trying to convince us that we aren’t enough for the task at hand or for the challenges ahead. Of course, as Adler taught, we can mature and grow beyond such self-defeating thoughts, but that’s often easier said than done.
I consider myself a fairly secure person, but one of my first experiences as a new California resident reminded me how easily feelings of insecurity can strike. My wife and I had moved to Los Angeles from a relatively small town in Washington State. We were used to the casual, unassuming lifestyle and dress of the Pacific Northwest, the polar opposite of Hollywood glamour.
One night, we ate dinner at a restaurant in Malibu Beach known for being frequented by celebrities. I remember looking around at a room full of the most beautiful, elegant, well-dressed, and seemingly self-assured people I had ever seen and feeling completely out of my element. At that moment, I had to make a conscious decision not to listen to the voices in my head that told me I had nothing to offer, that no one in the entire state of California would listen to me. I had to choose to focus on who I was, not who I was not; on what I had to offer others, not on how I could compete with them; on what I thought of me, not what they thought of me. Within a few seconds, my mind stopped feeding me insecurities and instead started rehearsing the unique experiences and knowledge and values we brought with us.
It was a healthy experience, actually, because it reminded me that it’s okay—actually, essential—to simply be myself. That simple realization took the anxiety level down to zero and allowed me to enjoy the evening. To this day, that restaurant is one of our favorite places to go. And when we are there, I still look around the room in awe—but it’s the awe of admiration, not intimidation.
The key to handling those feelings of not fitting in, of not measuring up, of feeling awkward and out of place, is to just be you. Humbly accept what you are not, but let those feelings also remind you of what you are. The areas where you are “weird” or a “nerd,” where you obsess, where you find yourself internally motivated to study and experiment and learn—are often areas where you are particularly gifted to think and lead beyond most people. In a sense, everyone is awkward, because everyone is unique. That is a realization as beautiful as it is necessary.
The Comparison Trap
In order to see awkwardness as beautiful, though, you’ll have to learn how to recognize and avoid what is maybe the greatest single obstacle to being comfortable in your own skin: comparison. Comparison is the root of feelings of inferiority and insecurity, as Dr. Adler pointed out long ago. At times, you still feel like a kid in an adult world: everyone else is taller, faster, smarter. You compare your worst or your mundane to other people’s best. You take note of the parties you weren’t invited to, the events at which you weren’t asked to speak, the jobs you weren’t given. And if you’re not careful, you start to draw large-scale conclusions from a few small data points. A handful of failures or underwhelming performances will make you write off entire areas of your life: I’m not a good public speaker. I’m terrible in social settings. I don’t have anything to say. I don’t have a sense of humor. People don’t like me.
Comparison locks you up. You have gifts, but if all you listen to are internal voices telling you you’re inferior, you’ll never value them or use them. You’ll even despise them, resent them, bury them. I can think of few things more tragic than potentially great leaders burying their talents because they felt small in comparison to someone else. Pastor and author Craig Groeschel says it this way: “The fastest way to kill something special is to compare it to something else.”6
On the other hand, security and confidence are freeing. Security in who you are makes you followable. People love to be around leaders who are comfortable in their own skin, because that attitude releases them to be themselves as well. Keep in mind that confidence comes from security, not the other way around. First you become secure on the inside, then you exude confidence on the outside: confidence in words, confidence in decisions, confidence in social settings, confidence in your calling. Every form of confidence starts with knowing who you are (identity) and valuing who you are (security).
Insecure people sabotage their leadership without even realizing it. They constantly wonder if someone else is more skilled than them or more popular than them. They feel intimidated by the success of their team members, which is counterproductive since the whole point of a team is to accomplish what one person could not. In the process, insecure leaders make everything about themselves. They may not do so intentionally, but it still happens. They somehow manage to turn every occasion and conversation into something that bolsters their own worth and success.
Secure leaders, on the other hand, can remain in the background or stand in the spotlight, and it doesn’t change their sense of self-worth at all. Secure people can celebrate others. They are generous with their praise. They share the platform. They don’t think more highly of themselves than insecure people; they simply think about themselves less. They are secure enough in who they are that they can focus the bulk of their attention on their team—and that is precisely what makes them so followable.
Being Good with Being You
So how do you go from comparison to confidence, from insecurity to security, from inferiority to self-acceptance? Put another way: how does awkwardness become a gift? It’s a process, not a onetime event, but it’s a process you have to choose to engage with. It won’t happen by itself. Here are three essential elements of this journey to self-orth.
1. Decide to Value Yourself and Your Gifts Now, Not Later
Use your feelings of awkwardness as a reminder to value yourself now, for who you are, independent of anyone else’s opinions or successes. The voices of insecurity and inferiority are nothing but the comparison trap trying to stop your progress.
At that restaurant, I made a choice to believe in myself and value myself rather than trying to prove myself. It was a small thing, but most of life is made up of small things. It is how you choose to see yourself in those little moments, in those opportunities to believe in yourself or to doubt yourself, that end up defining your self-concept.
If you wait to feel good about yourself until you beat one more person, win one more accolade, or achieve one more goal, you’ll be waiting a long time. That’s precisely the lie of insecurity—that self-acceptance is waiting on the other side of something you must do or fix or become. If you can’t accept yourself now, though, you likely never will.
Valuing yourself and your gifts means recognizing how important you are. No one else can do that for you. Your self-worth is your responsibility. Your team members, your spouse, your boss, your friends—none of them can convince you of your value if you don’t believe it yourself, and it will exhaust them to try. What you have to offer is valuable, but if you despise it, you’ll hide it, squander it, or dilute it.
Choose to place value on what you bring to the table, starting now. Then, over time, continually increase what you have to offer: learn as much as you can, serve wherever you are able, give the most you can give. But don’t wait until you reach some nonexistent, rainbow-pot-of-gold moment before you start valuing yourself.
2. Celebrate Other People—Genuinely and Often
Feeling awkward reminds you of the contributions of others—and that’s a good thing. Recognize the talents, wins, and growth of others as often and as exuberantly as you can. First, because they need it and deserve it. But second, because it keeps your mind and emotions in a healthy place.
There is something freeing about cheering for other people. Why? Because insecurity typically tries to pull other people down in a misguided effort to feel better about itself, every time you choose to lift people up, you are taking a stand against insecurity in your own mind and heart. You are reminding yourself that you don’t need to be better than anyone in order to be valuable; that your worth is not based on your accomplishments; that someone else’s success doesn’t lower your value.
We can all be successful, which means we can all celebrate other people without feeling like it takes something away from us.
Celebrating others also reminds you that other people are not really the competition. Granted, in certain business or athletic scenarios, other people are the competition, but I’m not talking about that—I’m talking about the underlying fear or belief that someone else’s success somehow diminishes mine. Success is not a finite quantity that must be shared among us all. If it were, then someone else getting a bigger piece of the success pie would mean there is less for me. But that’s not how success works.
3. Invest in What You Are Good At
Feeling different or thinking you don’t fit in is a reminder that you are unique. That uniqueness needs to be celebrated and even enhanced. The goal isn’t to fit in, because to fit in you’d have to be like everyone else. The goal is to be you. So, rather than spending inordinate amounts of time and energy trying to strengthen your weaknesses, lean into the things you’re naturally good at or the areas in which you have greatest potential for growth. Don’t ignore all your weaknesses, especially if they are hurting you or those around you in some way, but focus most of your efforts on excelling in your areas of strength.
It’s okay not to be good at everything. To use yet another sports analogy, most top athletes master only one sport—and often only one position or category within that sport. They might be skilled at other sports and they might enjoy other sports, but at some point, they choose to focus on the one area in which they have the greatest potential. In the same way, in your areas of strength, strive to become a specialist, an expert, an authority. Not to find value or identity in that (because there will always be a more specialized specialist or a more authoritative authority), but simply because those are the areas in which you can grow and give the most.
Comparison is a black hole that sucks up every compliment and accomplishment and only grows bigger and hungrier in the process. When faced with your limitations, decide to lead yourself away from comparison and toward security. Acknowledge where you’re weak. Laugh at yourself. Praise people who are strong in those areas. And then, turn toward your strength and work doubly hard at being even better. If you are the numbers girl, be the numbers girl. If you are the book guy, be the book guy. If you are the systems person, be the systems person. Find your strengths, revel in them—and maybe stop being so dramatic about your weaknesses. It doesn’t do you or anyone else any good.
Awkward can be a gift if you use it right. Like Sebastian Thrun, don’t be afraid of “feeling dumb,” but rather use your awkwardness, your nerdiness, your strengths, and your weaknesses, to direct your efforts. Turn your creativity and innovation toward your potential. Learn, grow, innovate, network, and most of all give.