Convinced of My Own Greatness

Here's another thing that I learned during the great group conscience affair . . .  By the way, I'm oh for two on group conscience votes which annoys the hell out of me even though I was pretty sure both losses were coming and had prepared myself emotionally to the best of my ability, if by "prepared" I mean "did not prepare at all.  I have to laugh at my impression of the size of my ego when it's not being tested versus when it's being shat upon.  Big difference.  I'm humble as hell normally unless someone is disagreeing with me about something.


There were a couple of individuals who I knew disagreed with me vigorously on the matter at hand.  They were at the group conscience and I could see that they were loaded for bear.  As I told everyone about the information I had collected I could see that they were chomping at the bit to speak, even though I thought my material was pretty neutral, but then again when I think I'm right - and in this case I'm really, really convinced of my rightness - I'm pretty sure I'm being neutral.  When I was still doing sales presentations I was careful to note who was chomping at the bit to say something, to make a point, to further expound on the situation - we call it "The Tip of Tongue" phenomenon - because these people were simply not listening to what I was saying, so that I was basically not making any noise at all.  They were tolerating me, waiting for me to stop speaking, so they could say what they wanted to say - their comments were on the tips of their tongues, ready to be discharged.  As soon as I paused for a millisecond, they'd unleash a torrent of words that usually had nothing to do with what I had just said.  Sometimes there would be a question or a point raised that I had addressed in what I had just said that they weren't listening to.  This didn't make them bad people - it made them humans with egos that needed to be heard.  But I sure learned not to waste my time talking to people who weren't listening.  Sometimes I could wear them down but sometimes I never got through.


The folks at the group conscience made their point.  They were agitated and passionate.  Agitated usually trumps measured.  It's more compelling, more noticeable.  It gets people's attention in no small part because most folks don't want to deal with agitated people.  They can be intimidating.  It was clear to me that no one had listened to what I had said; it never came up in their remarks.  Who knows - maybe what I said wasn't that interesting.  I didn't think what they said was interesting and they clearly thought they were being very interesting.


It appeared to me that the financial problems that we had been discussing disappeared magically by the end of the meeting.  I don't know where they went but they were gone.