By Amber Bradley, Editor-in-Chief, TalkLPnews
“Living in the light” is a phrase I’ve been saying to myself for a while now. I didn’t pull it from a book or a sermon – probably heard it through the years of the ‘self-help’ journey. For me it means doing the next right thing, whatever is right in front of me, and then doing the next one after that. Most days that’s pretty small stuff.
Small stuff like sending the note. You saw the promotion on LinkedIn, the award, the case your peer finally closed after eighteen months, the team that pulled off the program you’ve been begging for budget on for two years. You thought “good for them.” Did you tell them? Most of us don’t. We hit the thumbs up and keep scrolling, and if we’re honest a few of us feel a little pinch. Why them and not me?
That pinch is worth paying attention to, because somebody else’s win doesn’t subtract from yours. There’s no shrink report on credit. Your peer getting the VP title didn’t take a thing off your resume, and the colleague who got called out on stage didn’t steal your applause. The math only feels zero-sum when we’re tired and comparing.
I’ve noticed something over the years, and I’ll call it karma for lack of a better word. The people in this industry who are quickest to say “great job” tend to be the ones everyone trusts. They get the call back. Their opinion carries weight in the room because nobody wonders what their angle is. I don’t think that’s why they do it, and it shouldn’t be why you do it either (people can smell kudos-as-investment-strategy from a mile away). But the credibility comes anyway. So does the joy, which surprised me more. Finding delight in somebody else’s good week is about the cheapest way I know to make the daily grind feel lighter.
Which gets me to the question I ask myself more than I’d like to admit: what is all this for anyway? For me and everyone at TalkLPnews, the answer is pretty simple. We’re here to help LP and AP professionals any way we can. I don’t walk in your shoes every day. I’m not the one getting the 2 a.m. call about a smash-and-grab or sitting across from a district manager defending a shrink number. I learn from the perimeter, from your stories and the hallway conversations, and we try to hand back something useful.
That job comes with some jabs. A few of them sting. But when I think about the people in this industry who pick up the phone and trust us with their stories, the jabs barely register.
So this week, think of one person whose win you noticed and never mentioned, and tell them what specifically impressed you. It takes about two minutes. That’s living in the light, at least the way I see it.
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