​

​

What about the cobbler's kids?

The cognitive bias is all too pervasive. A marketer who grows her clients’ businesses 2-3x, but struggles to write a blog for herself. The career coach who guides his clients to take big risks, is stuck. A therapist who brings couples closer feels estranged from her partner.

It's so pervasive there's a proverb dating back several hundred years lamenting how the cobbler's kids have no shoes. Since the beginning of human time we've struggled to square a nonjudgmental capacity to help others with an inability to treat ourselves with the same clarity and compassion.

There are at least a couple of reasons for this. First, it's easier to give advice than it is to take action. Secondly, when we give others advice we have a certain plausible emotional distance from the source. We can see what ails them more rationally, and therefore give sound and measured advice.

When it comes to viewing ourselves, however, the terrain is riddled with ingrained biases and emotional resistance. Blindspots form and fossilize.

To view ourselves with more clarity and compassion we have to create more emotional distance from our experience. One of the best ways to do that is through another person who can shine a different perspective of us and what we're doing. That person might be a therapist, coach, trusted friend or colleague, and in some cases family. Although family can't always provide the necessary emotional distance.

Although I'm cynical about the over-reliance of personality test assessments, they can also yield valuable insights.

Journaling is another useful tool. We can see ourselves better by writing about our experience of the thing. Some go so far as to recommend journaling about yourself in the third person.

All are ways of externalizing the challenge and our experience of it. Doing so can make confronting the obstacles feel less overwhelming and more manageable.

Even as I consult and coach clients on growing their businesses, I hired my own coach to help as I think through how I want to grow my coaching and consulting practice while project managing the novel. I have writing partners and groups who give feedback on the book which can help clear creative blindspots. I journal most mornings, and have even dabbled with writing about myself in the third person.

The bottom line is that we can always use advice, or at least a fresh vantage point. Any small but periodic effort to create that emotional distance and see yourself and your pursuits through a different light is highly valuable. It's a form of continuous learning that adds a certain richness to our life and the lives of those around us.

​

Links

1. Today is Election Day in Mexico, when millions will cast their votes for president, congress, governors, and a slate of local candidates. Claudia Scheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City and hand-picked successor to term-limited AMLO, most likely will win and become Mexico's first female president and first Jewish president. She leads by almost twenty points, but some expect it to draw tighter when polls close tonight. Here's a good summary of what to expect in the election, and a deeper essay about AMLO's influence behind the scenes.
   ​
2. Across the border in the US we're five months away from our election. Trump is now, or soon will be after sentencing, a convicted felon. On the day of the ruling I heard from an Argentinian friend and a Mexican friend who both expressed admiration and hope based on the ability of a system to hold its most powerful people to account. That kind of justice isn't easily found in most of the world. And yet, we are well positioned to fuck it all up. Both David Remnick and David Frum write eloquently about the importance of the verdict, while also making it plain that the real verdict will be delivered on November 5th.

​

​

​
​

Next Sunday

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for next week. If you aren’t already subscribed, please join my newsletter here. We deliver on Sundays. :)