It Turns Out We All Worry About Being Losers

I was tumbling down the rabbit hole of a Google search the other day, going from one link to the next, when I landed at Tara Hunt’s HorsePigCowblog. You might be familiar with Tara if you’re at all interested in social media, social marketing, social networks and other related social hoo-ha. Basically, Tara’s great. And she wrote, “If nobody shares they are struggling, nobody will know anybody else is struggling. That results in a bunch of people feeling isolated and scared and like big fat losers.”

So many of us keep our fears and struggles to ourselves believing that revealing them could somehow brand us with loser status and eventually imperil our careers or reputations. Are we being savvy or just creating unnecessary isolation? Are there issues you wish you could share with others?

It is both liberating and energizing to have professional confidants in whom we can share our worries, concerns, and aspirations, but it can be hard to establish these kinds of relationships. One must reveal a fair degree of vulnerability in order to engender trust in another, and that can feel risky. The consequences of failing to open up can be quite high, however.