Stand Up

Don't just say things. Do them.

“Stand up” has become a mantra in our home. It’s verbal shorthand for an exchange I had with one of my children several years ago that really hit home.

One of my daughters was expressing admiration for a friend who was known for being funny, and she asked me for advice on how to get people to think of her as funny, too.

The flaw in her thinking was obvious.

So I said to her,

“Have you ever had to tell someone how tall you are?”

“No”

“How do they know?”

“I just stand up, I guess.”

Exactly.

Now that analogy is particularly salient for my brood, given the shortest of the bunch is 5’9”— five inches taller than the average American woman — and they grew up fielding a lot of commentary about their statures.

My eldest at her preschool graduation.

Still, I think the point survives no matter how tall (or short) a person is.

Merely claiming you possess some trait, skill, or quality doesn’t make it so.  Without the goods to back it up, selling yourself as being a particular thing has no value. The meaning is found in the doing, and that’s how you make an impact on the world around you. That’s what people remember.

And given the emphasis modern culture places on the appearance of X, with very little regard for whether X actually exists, her question makes sense — and it also makes the lesson that much more important. Irrespective of the messages she gets from the world, while superficial accolades and “validation” might stroke one’s ego, they’re no proxy for actual impact.

The people who move the needle are the do-ers — those with a bias toward action who take the time to learn and hone a skill or trait. They try. They fail. They try again. They create. They disrupt. They embody. They cultivate. They are the folks who behave the same way when people are watching as they do when there’s no one around.

They don’t have to tell people who or what they are because it’s self-evident. They are because they do. And when that be-ing resides in you, instead of other people’s perceptions, it becomes a tangible thing from which you will derive confidence that cannot be taken away.

No one remembers the people who tell everyone how funny they are (at least not as being funny. ;) They remember as funny the people who made their stomachs hurt from laughing.

How the world perceives you is largely out of your control, and that’s another important lesson to learn. But the doing and the being — that’s all you.

And the best among us never have to tell people they are the best.

They just stand up.