Everybody* Wants You to Win

I thought I remembered reading a tweet that went along the lines of “everybody wants you to win,” but I could not track it down. It is entirely possible that I made it up. If someone finds the original, I would be very happy to link it. Until then, I am bringing the piece into existence myself.

There is this mildly delusional belief I hold: that if something is not physically impossible, then there is probably a way for me to do it. Not immediately, but given enough time and training. I cannot just wake up tomorrow and bench 220. But, with enough dedication and stubbornness, I can probably get there. As long as something is just improbable, and not impossible, there is still a chance. A chance that is better than nothing.

Somewhere along the way, this turned into another useful delusion: everybody wants me to win. In the broader sense, everybody wants you to win too.

Think about a date. The other person is probably not going out with you hoping that the evening is terrible. They want you to be interesting. They want it to go well. In the best case, they want you to be the last person they ever have to go on a first date with. The same thing is true in less romantic settings. An interviewer wants to find the right candidate. Your manager would like you to become better at your job; hiring and training someone new sounds like work. A customer wants the thing they bought to work. When a comedian walks on stage, the audience wants the joke to land. When a musician starts playing, people want them to find the note.

Unless you are uniquely miserable, you do not sit down to watch someone perform and hope they embarrass themselves. You want the movie to be good, and you want the standup to be funny, and you want your attention, which is already scarce, to have been well spent. I believe that most people are not cruel judges waiting to catch you slipping. A room where someone is good is more fun than a room where someone is bombing, as your success often makes their day better too.

The problem is that we are very good at rejecting ourselves on behalf of other people before they are allowed to do that themselves. You don't want to apply to that job because you don't meet every requirement in the listing and assume you are underqualified. You don't want to send that message because you have already decided that they won't reply.

This is an incredibly efficient and well-optimized system. If you close the door yourself, then nobody else can close it for you. But this anxious or nervous feeling is not evidence that the room is skeptical. You cannot assume that the answer is no before you have received a no. There are more possible outcomes than that. Maybe you are not the obvious candidate, but you learn quickly, or maybe the timing is bad, but they know someone else. Maybe the person cannot help with the exact thing you asked for, but instead can point you in a better direction. None of that can happen if you reject yourself first.

Sometimes, you need to rephrase the question from “what if it doesn't work out?” to “what if it does?”

“Everybody” is doing some irresponsible work in this thesis. Some people do not care whether you win and instead might benefit from your failure, or some are jealous, cruel, or simply too busy with their own lives to think about yours. This does not mean you stop asking, since this is just extra information. If your manager does not care about your growth, even when helping you improve is in their own interest, maybe that is not a great manager to build your future around. If someone repeatedly wants you to stay smaller than you are, go ahead and find a better room to be in.

At the same time, believing that people might be on your side is also not permission to just show up unprepared and expect a prize. It is more like borrowing optimism for long enough to begin the process. If an interviewer wants you to be the right candidate, you need to prepare enough to make saying yes easy. If someone offers to help, give them a concrete way to do it. “I do not know what I am doing with my life” is hard to respond to. “Every time I do X, I feel Y, and I think it may be because of Z. Can I get your perspective?” gives another person something to work with.

Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it. – Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling

Ask for the introduction, send the application, and ask the stupid question before it becomes an expensive mistake. You will be surprised how often people are willing to help once they know what help looks like.

You cannot make people root for you, and you cannot make them say yes, but you can stop deciding that they have already said no. Hence why I believe everybody wants you to win, and if you still think this does not apply to you, remember that, at least at the end of the day, I want you to win.

Be a little delusional, take the swing, and let them decide. The worst they can say is no.