Latest / YINWorldWide / The People You Put Above You
Transcript
- YIN: This week, I spent a few days traveling for work, meeting clients, sitting across the table from people I've worked with for years. And somewhere in the middle of one of those conversations, I noticed something had changed. When we first started the business, I walked into those rooms differently. I would meet someone who had built a successful company. Without ever saying it out loud, I would put them above me. They had more experience, more money, more influence. and somewhere inside of me, all of that became they must know something I don't. then it became they must be different than me. And if I'm being honest. Sometimes it became they must be better than me. Not consciously. I never walked into a meeting thinking this person is more valuable than I am. but I could feel it in the way that I approach them. Their opinion carried more weight than mine. Their approval mattered more than it should have. And this week, that feeling wasn't there. I still respected what they had built. I still wanted to learn from them. I just didn't feel beneath them. And that stayed with me. because the people hadn't changed. But I had. Which left me with the question that I couldn't answer. Why do we put anyone up there in the first place? Because we don't only do it to successful people. We do it with our parents, teachers, bosses, friends, and yes, even the people we marry. There's nothing wrong with looking up to someone. That's completely human. But there is a difference between saying I respect this person and saying this person is above me. And I don't think we've ever really asked what the second one cost. This is yin, and these are conversations about discipline. direction and identity and how they quietly shape who you become. This is how the pedestal gets built. It starts earlier than most of us realize. Think about being a child. Your parents don't feel like ordinary people. They feel like the people who know. They know where you're going. They know what happens next. They know the rules. At least that's how it feels. Then you go to school and there's adults at the front of the room telling you what's correct and what isn't. Coaches tell you how to perform. bosses tell you how things work. Little by little, you get used to the idea that certain people stand above you. And then something else happens. And I think this is the part that we miss. The pedestal doesn't get built out of what we know about someone. It gets built out of what we don't. Because the less you know about a person, the easier it is to make them extraordinary. You see the finished company, you don't see every bad decision that almost ended it. you see the wedding photo, you didn't hear the argument the night before. You see someone speaking confidently on stage, you have no idea what they say to themselves in the car afterwards. You see, we fill in the blanks and we almost never fill them in downward. That's why we take excellence in one area of someone's life and assume it must exist elsewhere. someone is a great athlete, so we listen when they talk about business. Someone is wealthy, so we assume they understand relationships. Someone is famous, so we become interested in their philosophy. But why? Those things have almost nothing to do with each other. But once someone impresses you enough, we stop evaluating them the same way. and there's a real distinction that gets lost. Recognizing someone's strength is one thing. Turning their strength into a measurement of your own value is something else entirely. Someone can know more than you do about one subject, but that does not make them wiser than you about life. Someone can build something enormous and be completely lost inside their own marriage. Someone can look absolutely certain and have no idea what they're doing. And that isn't an insult. That's just what a person is. Here's what I've come to believe about pedestals. The problem isn't what it does to them. It's what it does to you. Because the moment you decide someone is above you, you start lowering yourself to meet the arrangement. Their opinion gets heavier. Their criticism cuts deeper than it should. Their rejection stops feeling like an opinion and starts feeling like a verdict. And eventually you begin handing over your own judgment. They've been doing this longer. They're the expert. They're my parent. And sometimes those things can be true. But being right about one thing has never made anybody right about everything. Nobody gets promoted out of being human. But watch what happens once you place someone above you. If an ordinary person behaves badly, you judge the behavior. When someone on a pedestal behaves badly, you start explaining it. Maybe they're having a bad day. Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe I caused it. But notice how quickly admiration turns into permission. Because eventually you can find yourself accepting things from one person that you would immediately recognize as unacceptable from anyone else. The behavior didn't change. Their position in your mind did. And then there's approval, which might be the strangest part of all of it. Ten people can tell you that you did well, one person you admire says otherwise, and the other ten disappear. Why does one opinion outweigh the ten? Because you assign the weight. You decided their judgment counted more. And once you've done that, their approval becomes evidence of your worth. And that's the hidden bargain. So, why do we build them at all? I don't think insecurity explains it. Not fully. I think pedestals make us feel safe. Let's go back to being a child again. There's a reason it's comforting to believe your parents know what they're doing. Imagine being five years old and fully understanding nobody in this house has done this before either. That would be terrifying. You need to believe somebody knows. and I'm not sure that need ever leaves. We want someone who understands, someone who has an answer, someone who seems certain when we are not. That's why successful people become a magnet. They don't look impressive, they look like evidence. Evidence that there's a path, evidence that somebody figured it out. But I think there's something underneath all of that. When you put someone above you, you're not just admiring them. you're handing them the verdict. Because being the final authority on your own life is the heaviest thing there is. Deciding what's true. Deciding what's right, deciding what to do with the one life you get with no guarantee you're choosing correctly. Nobody wants to hold that alone. So we find someone, a parent, a boss, a mentor, a stranger on a screen, and we quietly give it to them. Not the work, but the verdict. That's why some pedestals stay standing long after they should have come down. Because taking someone down means something uncomfortable. It means the verdict comes back to you. And the test comes when the person contradicts the version of them that you built. Because no human being can stay perfect long enough to match it. The parent says something selfish. The mentor makes a decision you can't defend. And we say, I can't believe they did that. Sometimes that's the right response. But sometimes what we're actually saying is I can't believe they turned out to be human. Then most people swing straight to the other extreme. They were perfect. Now they're worthless. they were a hero, now they're a fraud. But both versions are inventions. They were never the person you built, and they're probably not the monster you built afterward either. They were always somewhere in the middle, complicated, capable, wrong about some things. And here's what I think the disappointment is really about. It isn't always what they did. It's the fact that we don't always want people. Sometimes we want symbols. We want our fathers to represent strength. We want our mothers to represent unconditional love. We want the successful person to prove that success creates certainty. Once you turn someone into a symbol, you've stopped giving them permission to be a person. And when the symbol fails, you don't just lose them. You get handed back the thing that you gave them. And here's the part that makes this uncomfortable. The pedestals I can name are probably not the ones I should be worried about. Because once you can see what you've done, something has already changed. I can look back now and recognize that I once put certain people above me. I can recognize people from earlier parts of my life that I gave too much authority to. I can see those, Which means that the pedestals for those people are already coming down. What I can't see are the pedestals that I believe should still be there. The person whose opinion still carries more weight than I realize. The person I still become smaller around. The person I would defend immediately if somebody questioned why I give them so much authority. Those are harder. Because a pedal stool doesn't feel like a pedal stool when you believe that the person belongs on it. It just feels like reality. And maybe that's why these things can last for decades. You don't think you're surrendering your judgment. You think you're respecting theirs. You don't think you're making yourself smaller. You think you're being humble. You don't think you're looking for approval. You think their opinion simply matters more. And maybe that's the hardest pedestal to find. the one you still think is deserved. There is another side to this, however. At some point in your life, You may become the person somebody else puts on a pedestal. may assume that you know what you're doing. Someone younger may look at your career and assume you figured out something that they haven't. Someone may hear you speak for 20 minutes and assume the confidence they hear exists 24 hours a day. And that creates its own problem. Because being admired feels good. being the person people come to for answers feels good. And if you're not careful, you begin protecting the image they created. You stop saying you don't know. You stop admitting that you got it wrong. You start performing certainty because people have come to expect it from you. So now the pedestal isn't only distorting how they see you, it's changing how you behave. You become loyal to their idea of you. I know that there have been moments where someone asked me what they should do. And I felt the pressure to give them an answer even when the truth was I wasn't sure about it. and I think that's dangerous in both directions. None of us should need another person to stay perfect in order for our own life to make sense. And none of us should have to pretend to be perfect because somebody else needs us to be. Your parent was allowed to be wrong. Your mentor is allowed to have blind spots. Your hero is allowed to be human. And so are you. Maybe the best thing that you can give the people who look up to you isn't perfection. It's evidence that a person can be respected and still be unfinished. That someone can have wisdom and still have questions. That someone can be strong and still need help. Because the more human you allow yourself to be, the harder it is for anyone to mistake your strength for proof that you belong above them. So, I've been thinking about that feeling I noticed this week. Sitting across from people I once would have placed above me and realizing I didn't feel beneath them anymore. At first, I wanted to call it growth. Maybe it is, but I'm not completely sure. Maybe I just collected enough evidence of my own that I stopped needing theirs. Maybe experience changed the way that I saw them. Or maybe it changed the way that I saw myself. Maybe we need some of those people when we're younger, people to follow, people who make the world feel a little bit less uncertain. But eventually something changes. Eventually you have to understand that the people you looked up to for answers were human beings trying to answer their own questions. Your parents didn't know everything. Your mentors didn't know everything. And neither do you. That's not the frightening part. The frightening part is what happens when you finally accept it. Because once nobody is standing above you, the responsibility comes back to you. You have to decide what you believe. You have to decide when the person you respect is wrong. You have to trust your judgment, knowing your judgment will sometimes fail you also. And maybe that's why we keep some people on a pedestal longer than we should. It isn't only because we admire them. it's because having someone above us means we don't have to carry all of the weight alone. There's nothing wrong with looking up to someone. But the moment looking up to them requires looking down on yourself, it stopped being admiration. And maybe the real work is not tearing down every pedestal. Maybe it's learning to notice when you've built one, to notice when someone's opinion has become heavier than your own. When their approval starts deciding your value. when you find yourself explaining away things you never would accept from anyone else. Because that person never asked to stand above you. In fact, they don't even know that you've put them there. This is yin. If this resonated, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Not everyone, just someone who's ready. You can find Yin Worldwide Podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. And if you want to go deeper, visit our website at liveyin.com. Subscribe if you're committed to the work. If not, that's fine too. This isn't for everyone. Remember, move with intention.