Shaq O’Neal is heralded as one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He grew up squarely in my era, being only a few years older than myself. I was able to watch from the perspective of a young (clearly less physically gifted) athlete as he grew into a phenomenon. Shaq didn’t make it because he was big. It was a factor. An equally sized factor was the fact that Shaq did not give a fuck. That is the one thing he had going for him that I never caught on to. He didn’t care what others thought or how his actions ‘played’ in the wider world. Shaq is and always will be unapologetically Shaq, and for that I give him thanks. I finally figured out that it’s the secret sauce to being successful.
I care what people think about me. I walk around my job like a ghost because I don’t want to have to encounter people who have thoughts or feelings about who I am and how I operate. It needs to change, and I am making those changes starting with the acknowledgement of how and why that happens. Part of it has to do with how I established relationships. I was everybody’s friend–the social chameleon type who wanted to be in on the conversation. That never seemed like a hinderance until the tide shifted and people started to look at me more as a liability in some circles than a boon. I started getting tugged in different directions and the emotional tide pulled me away from the reasons and habits that formed my early success. I became the fodder of whispers and trash talk and that absolutely hurt me. I cared and I was sad and for years I wanted to quit. That emotional low affected the effort I put into the job and straight up made things worse.
Over time I found friends and a group/purpose within the school that made me proud. However, that too began to conflict with what was at the core of my life and I ruined that in the course of time.
I should’ve been more like Shaq.
I should’ve done me and been 100% unapologetic about doing me and wanting to do the things that both make me happy and create an environment where I feel at peace and where I explore the things in life I want to explore and achieve without any fucks to give about what other people think. Shaq did.