A man asks his friend Alex for brutal honesty about his appearance and habits, learning he hunches, avoids eye contact, and has awkward handshakes. These patterns trace back to childhood self-consciousness about his skin. He argues that seeking uncomfortable feedback is how you spot blind spots others see but you can't.
Chapters
Um, and so I actually found a friend who was super honest. It wasn't my best friend, wasn't a nobody, but kind of like in that middle line of friendship, kind of like a more than an acquaintance. His name is Alex. Um, and I remember asking him like, can you do me a favor? Can you just be as honest as possible? Like, don't hold back. And he's like, yep, totally. Like, all right, I mean, I haven't even asked you the question yet. Can you, can you just describe me to myself as if without using my name, as if you were talking to somebody else. Like, who am I to you without saying Ryan and without saying Sirhan? And he was like, oh yeah, you're that tall kind of skinny guy, weird gray hair. He's kind of funny, but most of the time not really. And he just started going off and I was like, well, okay, okay, okay. Told me I hunch over when I walk. And I give weird handshakes. It's like, what? And it was like, man, maybe you're just being mean. So I really thought about it. It was like, huh. Okay, well, the hair, I don't really want to change, so screw it. I'll just— I'll leave that, you know. I'm not going to take every piece of criticism he gave me and put it to use. Then I realized I was walking hunched over, um, and not making eye contact with people and giving weird handshakes because that had been a part of my muscle memory from when I was a little kid because I had such bad skin I was trained— I trained myself in high school and in college not to look people in the eye and not to shake their hands well because I was always so self-conscious about what I looked like. Um, and I just didn't realize that that carried over into my, my adult years. I just, I didn't realize that that sheepishness was still there, and I had to fix that. And that was super help, and it actually really, really helped me getting that feedback. So I would tell everybody to do that core identity work and make it uncomfortable. You will learn things about yourself that no one else would tell you except for that one person who you asked to be really honest with. Um, it'll, it'll really help them.
