I learned an unpleasant lesson about myself last week.
I was watching the 2022 World Snooker Championship. For those unfamiliar with snooker, it's a billiards game. Picture pool, but on a much larger table and with fewer colors. A very complex, very demanding sport of angles and position.
In the semi-final of the championship, steely veteran Mark Williams was up against slender powerhouse Judd Trump. Here’s a quick rundown of the match: Trump took an early lead, putting Williams in the underdog position for the entirety of the match. More and more, the crowd rallied to Williams' support as he scraped and clawed his way back into contention.
After several frames of Williams performing extraordinarily well, the audience was excited — they were almost belligerent with clapping and encouragement. The match was finally close again, and fans of both players were loudly showing their support in between shots.
At one point, in a decently tricky position, Williams went for an angled shot on a red ball to line himself up on the blue further up the table. Focused, steady, he struck the cue ball and cut the red.
While the red ball was still moving across the table, some overly-friendly audience member said, very loudly, "GREAT SHOT!" And I immediately got irritated.
Who does this guy think he is, I thought. You're just a random audience member. You're a nobody. You piping up and yelling “great shot” at the three-time snooker champion of the world is like a five year old running onto the court and telling Michael Jordan he’s proud of him. It's like, son, I don't need you to be proud of me. You're a spectator, just do your job and spectate.
In this moment, I thought of this audience member as a selfish degenerate.
And then I stopped. I realized how awful I sounded. I was thinking like an asshole. I was really not happy with myself for thinking this way. It’s kind of embarrassing to even share this with people on the internet.
This is not who I want to be.
Because I'm wrong? Well, not necessarily. This audience member might be a foolish loudmouth just like I thought he was. And I’m sure there are some of you who, like me, would have wished for this guy not to be aggressively loud during a game that’s supposed to be very quiet and classy.
More so, I was unhappy with myself because if I was Mark Williams in that moment, I would have faltered. I realized that if I was in Williams' position, my own silly, weak thinking would have ruined my momentum. Distracted me. Killed my game. I realized at that moment that I was completely unfit to deal with high-pressure situations.
And it made me wonder, what lessons are here to be learned? Now that I know how easily I would have been derailed in a high-stakes moment, what can I do with my thinking that makes me better?
A few things, I think.
First of all, noise is only noise. If I got shaken out of a stock trade every time I heard or saw something I didn't like, I would never make any money. The world is absolutely filled with things I don't like and don't want to hear. Or, at the very least, sounds and sights and sensations that don’t actually mean anything. My job is to find the best and ignore the rest. Find what is helpful and nice and supportive, and leave everything else where it belongs - outside of my mind. I mean, frankly, it is absurd and juvenile of me to immediately turn somebody’s encouragement into a bad thing.
Secondly, people do dumb things, but they often do dumb things in support of what they love or appreciate. You see this anywhere you look - on Twitter, in the crypto economy or the stock market, on the streets of New York City. People go to crazy lengths supporting what they care about, and, despite any resulting mistakes, that’s often an admirable quality. All Mark Williams (or Justin Ross) needed to think in that moment was "that was supportive. That was helpful. Very cool. Nice guy." No further thought was needed. Steely Mark Williams understood this. Amateur Hour Ross did not.
And finally, I don’t get to choose how people support what they love. And that also means that I do not get to choose how people support me. I can remove Mark Williams from the equation here and reflect upon my own life. There have always been people around me who do things that irritate me. Ask too many questions, try to shove proposals and solutions down my throat even when I haven’t asked for any, give me fake compliments, push me to do things I’m not passionate about… you name it. We all know how it feels to be supported in a way that isn’t exactly helpful.
But who am I to turn down good-natured and earnest support when it’s offered. A fool, apparently. An angry fool.
I need to spend some time training myself on this. Seeing where people are positive and supportive for what they care about, and seeing that as predominantly a good thing. Instead of a loud, obnoxious thing. The problem here is me, not the entire world.
It’s beautiful when the problem is me. That’s the most beautiful thing in the world. Because it means that I can fix it.
Now, sometimes people do things that are over the top. And it’s perfectly fair for us to check those behaviors. You certainly wouldn’t want a hundred people knocking on your front door saying “hey, I liked your tweet last night.” That would be pretty intrusive. But most of the time, people are no different than me. Just trying to find things they care about and put effort into those things. And that’s a win.
And who knows - maybe Mark Williams actually appreciated that guy’s interjection. And here I am, in the comfort of my low-stakes living room, making the situation about me. How dumb.
Drink some water, competitively
JDR
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” - Hanlon’s Razor