Give Credit
I recently noticed how horribly reluctant I am to give credit to other people. My roaring ego wants me to get all the credit and everyone else to get none. Me, me, me darlings, aren’t I wonderful. I guess I see your success as my failure. I think I hide this well. I hope I hide it well. I don’t want people to know I’m that guy. But maybe they do know. Maybe they’ve always known. I thought my cynicism and sarcasm made me look clever, but I now know they make me look mean spirited.
If your joke is met with great guffaws of laughter, I am quietly seething that it’s not me receiving the laughter. I’ll laugh along so as not to appear unsociable, but my laughter comes a little later, my laughter feels more contrived. If your life is an unmitigated success, I fabricate reasons for your success that don’t pertain to me. I imagine that your success is built on luck or nepotism or on criminality. I might say that your success has come at the cost of spending time with your children. You are selfish. Wouldn’t we all be successful if we were as selfish as you.
Often, I dismiss ideas as ludicrous or I think they are so obvious that I never even felt the need to voice them. Huh, didn’t we all know that anyway. I might listen to a podcast where they explain the revelations from some new research, and I will invariably either contradict the findings or claim that the findings are sooo obvious and did we really need the research as some sort of proof.
I am actually just a bitter old fool, floundering in my own failings.
One of my favourite pastimes is to read the comments of a newspaper article where they are slating someone rich and famous. I get such a warm feeling reading the witty put-downs about someone’s botched plastic surgery, or drug abuse, or nepo status, or latest relationship breakdown, or descent into criminality. Any sort of fall from grace is fair game. Don’t get me wrong I despise the newspapers for ‘building them up, and knocking them down’. Maybe I despise them for exposing my rotten core. I am worse than the commentors. The keyboard warriors sitting in their mum’s basement. I think I’m better than them because I wouldn’t do what they do, but quietly I egg them on.
It’s amazing how silently these vindictive personality traits can play in our minds. Especially those negative traits that perhaps we don’t want to recognise. We dress them up as something positive. We’re sort of proud of our scepticism and cynicism because it demonstrates that we know more about the workings of the world. But it hit me recently how debilitating these traits are. In many ways it’s just another form of victimhood. I’m telling myself that I am mediocre because I am law-abiding and have integrity and because I wasn’t given the advantages of those that are more successful. Maybe I’m preventing myself from being successful because my view of successful people is so disdainful.
So, I’ve started a new mental practice to try to help me overcome my inability to give credit to others. Similar to the practice of ‘giving gratitude’, I now also practice ‘giving credit’ and I find it equally pleasurable and therapeutic. The way I give credit is that I choose a person, maybe someone I know or someone in the public eye. Often it’s someone I don’t particularly like. It could be a politician whose politics are very different to mine or a youTuber that I find particularly obnoxious. It might be someone that I believe has wronged me or a boss that I resent. I spend a few minutes thinking of all the things I can give them credit for. Not sarcastic, mocking credit, but genuine credit. Maybe it’s their confidence or outspokenness or drive or desire to make a difference. Maybe it’s their ability to put themselves out there even though they may have few obvious talents. Maybe it’s their parenting, their marriage, their perseverance, or things they do for the community. In some cases it's their charisma. If they’re a nepo baby I might give them credit for overcoming the challenges and stigma that come with being a nepo, and of making the most of their opportunities.
As I’m ‘giving credit’ I feel the same positive feelings I get from meditation and ‘giving gratitude’. I can feel the release of feel-good chemicals. I feel calmness. And maybe, just maybe I become a slightly less bitter, more empathetic version of myself.