Life gets a lot easier when you realize how many people are full of shit

Headline is pretty self-explanatory, I think, but let me walk through a few quick steps here.

Caveat: Not everyone is full of shit. Most people aren’t, actually — or perhaps more accurately, they are on certain topics (I definitely am) but not across the board. A lot of people are genuinely good, and that’s reassuring about humanity. This is a 35,000-foot view blog post that will touch on a few things you may have experienced. It’s not meant to capture the entirety of the human condition in 600 or so words. I ain’t no magician.

Relationships: If you found 100 random women on the street and asked them their biggest complaint about guys, what do you think they would say? (This might actually work in hetero and homosexual relationships, I’d argue.) The list would probably include communication, listening, “being a player,” typical guy stuff, not knowing what they want, etc. Those things are all going to float up that list.

Hate to break it to you, but a lot of guys are unfortunately full of shit about relationships, because a lot of guys simply don’t have the emotional capacity around true intimacy. Why? Read this. A lot of guys — and I think I’ve fallen into this in my life — end up with someone at a certain time because they’re fun, the physical side is good, and all their other friends/colleagues are doing it at that age range. There’s a whole scene in Master of None (Aziz Ansari show) about this.

Now flip the gender script. What do guys say about girls? Probably too emotional, makes me wait too long, limited physical intimacy, too dramatic, too much time with her friends, whatever. That’s usually the guy list.

Women are usually less full of shit, at least IMHO, but how they approach relationships can be pretty fraught too — in large part because they’re usually smarter than guys, but have to appear dumber to get what they want in the long run. A shame, but often true.

Work: You spend a lot of time at work for the middle part of your life, so understanding the power dynamics of work is pretty important.

People are full of shit literally all the time at work.

The biggest way is usually how much you work / how important you are / how slammed you are.

That’s almost always a “full of shit” moment.

Technology and platforms to organize data/info made us all less busy, but we need to appear busy so we feel relevant and supposedly can’t be fired, so we cling to other useless tasks and use that to be “slammed.” It’s a brutal cycle.

Very few people are working 85 hours/week. Some are, yes. But a lot less than claim it.

And honestly, if you’re putting up 85/week, there are big issues with your relationships, your health, your ability to set priorities, your ability to understand what’s really important in your life, your time management, etc.

There are millions of other ways people are full of shit at work, including:

• “I will tattle on you because this process was not followed”
• Pretending to know what they’re doing when they don’t
• The entire concept of meetings/conference calls
• The fact that we can’t discuss salary
• Etc, etc.

To never forget: work is about control. People will be full of shit in a given situation if it allows them to feel like they have control over something. That’s why there are so many “experts” (quotes necessary) in business.

So what’s the path through?

Look, deep thought here: life is hard.

People die.

Relationships end.

Friends come and go.

Experiences change.

Money drops.

But life is also awesome in many respects.

You meet new people.

You learn about yourself.

Things change for the better.

You accomplish stuff you never thought you could.

The whole deal is a wave. A roller coaster.

And most of us don’t get to skip the second act, where everything happens.

So here’s what to do:

1. Realize a lot of people are full of shit.
2. Understand you are too.
3. Stop giving a fuck.
4. If it doesn’t affect your air space, let ’em be.
5. Be yourself.
6. Do your best.
7. Rinse and repeat.

The bottom line: We spend so much time at work worried about stuff like how busy we are or whether Nate tagged us in some project management tool. A lot of it is bullshit. We then spend time outside of work worried about what Mark wants from our deal or whether Cindy looks at her phone too much. We posture about all this stuff and make it an issue where it isn’t. It’s dumb. Everyone is full of shit to some extent. Everyone is also just trying to live their life the best they believe they can. Do the same. Don’t worry about the rest of the sludge.