The Self-Awareness Equation

I heard a story once about this math teacher. They’re solving 10 problems on a board in front of a classroom. This teacher intentionally gets one of the solutions wrong … because what the students don’t know is the teacher is going to slip in an outside lesson on self-awareness. The children all begin to laugh at the one solution that came out wrong. And as they do, the teacher calls out, “you all pointed out the one problem I got wrong … but none of you pointed out the 9 that came out correctly. What does that tell you about what you’re noticing for?”

A simple story meant to derive a single fact. That the majority of people will always notice the things that go wrong. The things that turn out bad. The things that don’t go the way you want them to. The majority of people, especially on social media literally can’t notice for the good things because they’re sorting for everything else. That brings me to my point. Don’t take it personally. The majority of people are not self-aware enough to notice what they’re noticing for. And that’s neither your problem nor your responsibility … it’s theirs.