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Chris Ebbert Senior Lecturer in Industrial Design, Mid Sweden University

Transcript:

Realise that you may not be a failure in the eyes of someone else.

Here’s my story. I was 40, divorced, had left a life in New Zealand behind that had fallen apart in the most dramatic way possible, and was invited at my cousin’s house in Austria to a summer party.

As we ate barbecued things and drank local beer, dreams were swapped and future visions exchanged. My cousin is a sound engineer, struggling as a consultant, doing the odd gig in Vienna or Salzburg.

We talked about happiness.

And I heard myself saying, “maybe some day, when I am successful, I will know what happiness is.”

My cousin looked at me as if I was very, very drunk. And maybe, I was. And he said, “Chris; you are the dean of a French university, a Grande Ecole at that, in Shanghai. And you say ‘some day when you are successful’?”

That changed my world view.

I realised then and there that it depends very much on whom we ask whether we feel like failures, or not. All I had been able to see was how badly things had gone for me in New Zealand, and how the expat position in China really was only a gap filler till I would be able to find something to replace the life I had had in NZ. That that life in Shanghai was in itself pretty cool was somehow off my radar.

Perhaps you need to ask the right people? Try to understand what the average person’s existence on this planet is like. Success and failure are not quantitative values. They are dangerously subjective perceptions, and require some grounding in basic values.

So, stop comparing yourself to the wrong people. By comparing ourselves to stars or celebrities of some standing, we will always look bad.

Here is the full episode of My Fluent Podcast with Chris Ebbert reading out loud:

E56 - Do we have another personality in another language?

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/myfluentpodcast/E56_-_Do_we_have_another_personality_in_another_language.mp3