David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

David McElroy

No matter how admired you are, your work won’t make you special

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I’ve always wanted to be special. Haven’t you?

I was 5 years old when I became aware of this, but I was too emotionally immature to understand what I was feeling. I was outside the front of our house in Atlanta when a sudden thought struck me.

“I’m 5 years old and there are five of us in the family,” I said to myself in wonder. “That must mean I’m special.”

To an adult mind, that thought is nonsense. The coincidence was meaningless. But to a 5 year old who’s unconsciously struggling to feel special, it was something to hold onto. For that moment, it meant everything to me.

When we first reach self-awareness as tiny toddlers, the world revolves around us. All we experience are our needs and we know that the demands of our needs are met by other people. We don’t consciously understand that, but something in us gets it. We are special. We are the king or queen of the world for the moment.

You don’t remember it, but you felt that way. So did I. And we have spent our entire lives unconsciously trying to recover that wonderful moment when the world revolved around us — when we were special.

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Briefly: Your kids will remember your praise longer than you think

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Do you remember the first time in your life when you thought you might have some talent? When I was a young child, I did a crayon drawing in school of the Mayflower, similar to this drawing. It was the best art I had done, but it wasn’t really remarkable. My father didn’t pay attention, but my mother did. She didn’t live with us by then, but I showed it to her on a visit. She loved it and told me how well I had done. I was happy with the praise and she wanted to keep the drawing. The next time I was at her house, I saw my drawing on the wall — in a nice, professional frame. She had been proud of me. She wanted me to know that and she wanted visitors to her home to know that, which made me feel special. Children can tell when you give them false praise, but remember to give them sincere praise when they deserve it. Your child might still have a warm feeling in his or her heart decades later — as I do when I think about my mother’s pride in me.

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Kids obeyed me on radio project, only because I knew what to do

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I didn’t understand at the time how I ended up in charge of the radio project. People just started obeying what I said to do.

I was 15 years old. The National Junior Honor Society at Walker High School had an annual fundraiser with WARF radio in Jasper, Ala. For one Saturday of each year — some slow day when few other ads were sold anyway — we were allowed to sell as many ads as we could and then come to the station to perform them.

As far as I recall, the fundraiser had never been a big deal before. There was no planning that went into it. We were told one Friday morning that we could sell ads that day — during class time — and then write the ad copy. It seemed like a cool way to get out of classes for the day.

We met in a classroom underneath the school library. It was chaos at first. Naturally, most kids wanted to leave school and sell ads instead of staying behind to write ad copy. There were a few ads already sold which needed to be written, so I sat down with a few other people to start writing.

Nobody was in charge, but before I knew it, I was in charge. For years, I’ve pondered the lessons of that weekend — how it came to be that people followed me.

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