Monday, March 13, 2017

March Madness: A Badly Named Social Experiment

What would you do if it wasn’t hard?
Who would you be if you weren’t afraid?

I fall into the trap of being comfortable with being comfortable more often than I should ever be comfortable to admit. There’s a lot of comfort in that sentence. That’s the problem.

How do we challenge ourselves to break the cycle?

“Do one thing every day that scares you” I do believe Eleanor Roosevelt may be wise enough to trust on this matter…  Without knowing much (anything) about her, she has one of those impressive names I just fearlessly trust.

As per Eleanor’s instruction, that was the task I set myself on March 1.
For 10 days: To do something each day that I would do if I was a better version of myself - a version of myself that doesn’t care what people think, a version that acts on instinctive gut feel, a version that lives in the moment.

The goal: 
Get used to rejection, get used to being uncomfortable, and learn to listen to instinct.
Also, on a lighter note, what fun is there to life if we can't do mad social experiments every now and then?

So, in no particular order, these are some of the requests and acts I embarked upon in my March Madness (disclaimer: what I found out-of-the-ordinary may be completely normal for others... it is entirely possible that I'm just really shy or something)


  • Asked for a tour of a kitchen at a restaurant


The waitress was confused, no, perplexed, by this request. I was surprised by how surprised she was – a few seconds of awkward humans sitting around surprised looking at each other – if that’s not the makings of a good night, I don’t know what is. When the waitress had gathered her thoughts, she said “no-one has ever asked this before”.   She may or may not have thought we were health inspectors sceptical of the cleanliness of the kitchen.  She disappeared for a few minutes and told us that we could not do a kitchen tour because of how busy it is, but we are welcome to have a kitchen tour in the morning. Box ticked as a rejection, but box simultaneously checked as a moment of stepping away from normal routine conversation – the start of something interesting.


  • Asked to be taught how to make a pizza at a pizzeria


Couldn’t have gone smoother – we are allowed behind the counter, asked to wash our hands, and get down and dirty with pizza ingredients and some behind-the-scenes learnings. Who knew a pizza oven could hold 15 pizzas at once, and that it takes 5 minutes per pizza? Success.


  • Asked to be taught how to bake croissants at a bakery


This bakery happen to not bake their own baked goods. A bakery with bakers that don’t bake? Who would have thought? They sheepishly admit that they have never baked anything and they couldn’t teach me to bake if they tried. A candid moment, but a disappointing one.


  • Asked for a 20% discount at bowling


I need to become a better negotiator. I have learnt this about myself. Business, life, relationship – it’s one big negotiation, one big compromise. What’s a good way to learn this? Ask for discounts at the most random opportunities. One major learning I’ve had over the last few months is that price is often so much more negotiable than we realize. I digress – the lady behind the counter was not having my newly adorned negotiation skills for one second – I was dismissed out of hand. No discount of any nature for me. I ended up losing the game miserably, in case you were wondering.


  • Tried to buy the grocery store cashier her favourite item in the store


I’m not a big fan of the colourless, emotionless usual routine at a grocery store of ringing up products, swiping the card and walking off. It’s a 2 minute interaction between two humans yet we so often just let that pass us by lost in our own minds, completing the transaction with an empty “have a good day”. This was going to be another one of those instances, until I awkwardly broke that by asking the cashier “what’s your favourite thing in the whole store?” Her reply – “Prawn Cocktail chips – why?”.  In that moment, I knew what I had to do. I told her to wait there, and dashed to the unhealthy aisle to pick up a packet of said chips, and dashed back past bewildered shoppers in the queue to place the chips down, and asked her to ring it up. She was giggling nervously – perhaps wandering my intention. I asked her again to ring it up, and that she could save it for after her shift. She proceeded to tell me that she would get fired if she accepted this, because of the cameras up above. I immediately felt really bad to have put her in this uncomfortable position. I paid for my groceries, high-fived her, and walked off with a bolt of adrenaline to the heart, having nearly got a perfectly good young employee fired.  Silly? Yes. Fun? Absolutely.


  • Had lunch with an ex-girlfriend


Need I say more?


  • Had my first Spanish conversation


When one has been learning Spanish for 10 days, one should have been practicing speaking Spanish for 10 days. Or so some say. With a mere vocabulary of “trescientos palabras” (300 words), I engaged on my first full Spanish conversation – it was terrifying, it was fun, I made no sense whatsoever – but most importantly – I got the shot in the arm needed to keep going, believing I can do this.


  • Cold-called my top 5 highest value potential clients


For some reason I had been putting this off. I had emailed about 150 potential clients. I had called about 40 potential clients. But I couldn’t stomach the idea of calling the clients that could tangibly make a difference to my business if the calls and subsequent proposals were successful. I constantly ask myself – Is that fear of rejection, or fear of success? Well, on this day, I called these prospective clients, had great conversations, and have been following up since. Who knows where this ends up, but it feels fantastic to have initiated something I had been putting off unreasonably for so long. Another box ticked.


  • Initiated conversation with 5 strangers at an event


Networking events are supposed to be networking events. The only slight problem is that people are terrified of networking. Naturely, we enjoy sticking to the groups we arrived in. Despite our best intention to socialize with others, human nature is to seek comfort when faced with discomfort. When initiating these conversations, I discarded the overdone “what do you do?” question and tried to understand the person without typecasting a certain job to a certain personality type. I hope to one day remove “what do you do?” from my vocabulary. I also hope to one day have a good answer for the question myself. Until now, the answer of “dentist for dogs” or “I train dogs to walk on their hind legs” has only got me so far.


  • Gave my favourite book of the year to a stranger


This terrified me. I bought the book… and walked around the mall aimlessly for a few minutes looking for the “perfect person” to give it to.

I told myself:

When I see a 30 year old man I’ll give it to him…
But he must have a friendly face ..
And he can’t be too close to other people, because I don’t want witnesses to the awkwardness…
And he should be leaving the mall so that I don’t inconvenience him with something to carry around… 

Needless to say, the perfect opportunity never came. By the time I got to my car, there was no magical unicorn of a human awaiting an approach by a stranger – I had to create that moment. I drove away sheepishly, realizing that in life there is no perfect time to do anything – we have to create the perfect time, we have to make an imperfect moment the perfect moment to take an opportunity. The next day I summoned the courage to go back to the mall, walked straight to the nearest coffee shop, and interrupted a lovely middle-aged American lady’s coffee to ask her if I could bestow upon her one of my favourite books. I told her that I included the receipt in case she didn’t like it, but that it impacted me and I hope it impacts her equally. She went on to get tears in her eyes, and told me that the timing of this is so perfect, because she recently left her job and is about to pursue a new career back in USA.  This one really hit me. It felt like inserting contact lenses into a long blurry eye… a refreshed clarity on the joy of basic interactions.

So now that your coffee is finished, you’re late for gym, and you’re wondering whether you should read on – here I will try to extract some lessons from this whirlwind in as short form as possible.

Lesson 1:
There is no such thing as the perfect time to do something you want to do. Create the opportunity.

Lesson 2:
Doing strange things is fun. There is something about stepping out being spontaneous that reminds us that we are alive – that we are in control – and that there is potential beauty in each moment

Lesson 3:
Actively going out to get rejected is the best way to cure fear of rejection

Lesson 4:
Allowing ourselves to occasionally act on gut instinct or impulse rather than over-analysing situations can be liberating, and can result in true joy

Lesson 5:
There is opportunity in every interaction to challenge ourselves and grow.

Lesson 6:
Some people find it easy to do bold societally strange things – but for the rest of us, the ability to challenge societal norms is like a muscle we can build with practice


So that was my experience. I won’t necessarily be doing this every day for the rest of my life (I’m sure the acts would get crazier and crazier until I’m eventually walking across volcanic lava completely naked – no-one wants to see that), but I certainly have been awakened to the fun of spontaneous action.

We are so often anxiously concerned about the future. We are so often miserably transfixed with the past. How do we get joy in the present? We’re all figuring it out, but maybe, maybe, if we train ourselves to see opportunity and do something that scares us more often, we can get a step closer to that joy.

Hasta luego