Being Yourself Is the Long Game
A speaker recounts receiving critical feedback about smiling too much at work, attempting to suppress their natural personality by adopting a somber demeanor, which backfired when colleagues noticed the dramatic change. The experience reinforced their belief that maintaining an authentic personality is more sustainable than adopting multiple personas.
Summary
The speaker shares a formative workplace experience from when they were 20 years old. They received feedback from a senior executive criticizing them for smiling too much. Shocked by this criticism, they attempted to conform to this feedback the following day by adopting a completely different demeanor—becoming super solemn, wearing gray, and suppressing their natural cheerful personality. This dramatic shift was immediately noticed by their colleagues on the floor, who expressed concern and confusion, asking what had happened or if something bad had occurred. The speaker describes feeling deeply miserable while trying to be someone other than themselves. This experience led them to adopt the philosophy of playing the long game with their true personality, reasoning that maintaining authenticity is simpler and more sustainable than managing multiple personalities, as doing so would require an unrealistic level of memory and mental energy to keep track of different personas.
Key Insights
- The speaker was criticized by a senior executive for smiling too much at age 20, which caught them off guard despite the feedback being relatively minor
- When the speaker attempted to change their personality overnight by becoming somber and wearing gray, colleagues immediately noticed and expressed concern, suggesting the change was unnatural and alarming
- The speaker experienced significant emotional distress when trying to suppress their true personality, describing themselves as 'so miserable not being me'
- The speaker concluded that maintaining multiple personalities is cognitively unsustainable because it requires too much memory to manage different personas consistently
- The speaker adopted a long-term strategy of being their authentic self rather than code-switching, framing authenticity as the practical choice for sustainable self-presentation
Topics
Transcript
[0:00] And I remember getting the feedback from the big big boss and he said, "You smile too much." So the next day and I was so taken aback, but I'm 20. And the next day I was like super solemn and I wore gray and all my colleagues on that floor by the end of the day were like, "What happened?" Like who are you? And like did something bad happen? And I just was so miserable not being me. And I've always had to know play the long game of my true personality. like it's too complex to have multiple personalities [0:32] because you don't have that great of a memory.
Full transcript available for MurmurCast members
Sign Up to AccessMore from How I Invest w/David Weisburd
The Governance Secret Behind Big Returns
A fund leader discusses how governance structures, particularly delegating investment authority to staff, drive returns in public funds. The speaker was attracted to modernizing a $100 billion fund with only 35 people by adopting a Canadian-style governance model and building internal asset management capabilities.
$1 Trillion Investor on the Future of Venture Capital
Miguel Luina from Hamilton Lane discusses how venture capital has grown to represent 31% of private markets, making it an institutional-grade asset class that investors can no longer ignore. He emphasizes that successful venture investing requires focus on manager selection, relationship building, and a flexible multi-strategy approach combining fund investments, co-investments, and secondaries.
The Next Trillion-Dollar Commodity
The speaker argues that compute is becoming the next trillion-dollar commodity, replacing oil as the primary economic input for modern society. They advocate for the creation of a liquid market for compute resources, similar to the commodity markets that exist for oil and other traditional resources.
The Emerging Manager Extinction Test
A venture capital investor discusses how emerging fund managers are becoming more sophisticated and strategic in their hiring practices. Rather than bringing in equal-level partners for subsequent funds, successful managers are now hiring junior talent while maintaining control, and timing the addition of non-investment support based on fund size and strategy.
The Battle for AI Dominance
The speaker argues that America must lead the data center buildout race against China to maintain technological sovereignty and protect against surveillance-based AI systems. While job displacement concerns drive opposition to data center expansion, the speaker contends that American-based models offer greater trustworthiness and security compared to Chinese alternatives.