APX-IV-0030
“They keep telling me to tone it down so others feel comfortable.”
Your drive is not the problem; their discomfort with it is. There is a difference between being told you are reckless and being told you are too much, the first is feedback, the second is a request that you become smaller so a room stays easy. Refine your edges. Never sand off the blade.
Your Practice
- Separate the note in two: is this about how you do it, or that you do it at all?
- Fix the 'how' if it's real, sharpen delivery, timing, tact. Owe nothing on the 'that.'
- Say it plainly once: 'I'll work on my delivery. I won't aim lower.'
- Find one person who is in the arena, not the stands, and take counsel from them instead.
The Architects
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much.”
Theodore Roosevelt, "The Strenuous Life," address before the Hamilton Club, Chicago, April 10, 1899