A man rides up to the front lines of a makeshift army.
His hair is long. Half his face is painted blue. And he’s dripping with confidence.
As he parades back and forth upon his horse, he addresses the masses before him.
Sons of Scotland. I am William Wallace.
The troops are nonplussed.
William Wallace is seven feet tall! one calls out.
Wallace takes it all in stride.
Yes, I’ve heard. Kills men by the hundreds. And if he were here, he’d consume the English with fireballs from his eyes and bolts of lightning from his arse.
The troops chuckle. But Wallace quickly assures them that he is indeed William Wallace. And he reminds them why they have assembled on the battlefield. He ends his remarks with a warning to the English opponents across the battlefield.
They may take our lives. But they will never take our freedom!
It’s the signature scene from the movie Braveheart, and one of the great battle speeches of all time.
But it only occurs thanks to a dose of self-awareness.
Wallace hears the skepticism as he introduces himself. And he plays along with it to earn their trust.
It’s a master class in persuasion. One that’s as needed in the real world as it is on the silver screen.
We don’t listen to the outside noise.
This type of line is seemingly everywhere in the sporting universe.
Ask a coach or a player about what others are saying about their chances, and they’ll shrug it off. Fans, media pundits, and oddsmakers can speak all they want. But they ain’t hearing any of it.
Belief within the locker room is all that matters to these players and coaches. So long as that exists, the sky is the limit.
It’s a tidy theory, one tailor made for an environment dictated by scheduled competitions. Athletes have the freedom to shut out the world and just go play.
But for the rest of us? It’s not so easy.
We don’t have the luxury of built-in trust. We can’t ignore the narrative that surrounds us.
Much like William Wallace, we must pander to the crowd to get what we want out of life.
And that can get complicated.
My high school didn’t have a uniform policy.
Teenagers were allowed to wear whatever they wanted, provided it wasn’t profane or overly revealing.
Many of my classmates took advantage of this freedom to sport the latest from Abercrombie & Fitch or American Eagle. But I went a different route.
Most days, I’d show up to class in an oversized football or basketball jersey. My close-cropped hair was hidden under a backwards baseball hat. It was a set of attire unbecoming of a school setting. But it was my look.
Surely, I got some sideways stares in the hallways. And my classmates likely talked about me behind my back.
But I didn’t care enough to pay attention to any of it.
What did it matter what others thought? I had a right to live my life the way I saw fit. The outside noise hardly mattered.
But fast forward five years, and my viewpoint was quite different.
I was in my last semester of college. And I was spending my evenings applying for jobs across the southern tier of the country.
Bakersfield, California. Waco, Texas. Macon, Georgia. And so on.
I had no connections to Bakersfield, Waco, or Macon. I just knew that TV stations in those cities were looking for a news producer. A role I’d spent four years studying to step into.
While I did land phone interviews with some of those stations, none of them offered me a job.
So, I walked across the stage at graduation and into unemployment. I moved back in with my parents. And I sank into a pit of despair.
I still believed in myself. But I was starting to realize that wasn’t enough.
If I hoped to land a job, someone else would need to believe in me. They’d need to look at my resume, listen to my interview responses, and decide I was worthy of their trust.
I needed this outcome to financially sustain myself, to validate my studies, and succeed in adulthood.
The outside noise meant everything. It guarded the door to opportunity. It blazed the path to my future. It was inevitable.
So, I cleaned up my act.
I ditched my college wardrobe of t-shirts and shorts in favor of business casual attire. (I’d long since graduated from jerseys and baseball hats.) I woke up earlier each morning and forced myself to be more productive each day. I started doing mock interviews, considering my answers from the interviewer’s point of view.
And shortly thereafter, I landed my first job.
Be your authentic self.
This advice was everywhere early in my professional career.
Individualism was having a moment. Instead fitting in, people were actively trying to fit out.
I admired the pluck of this movement. But I was hesitant to play along.
For I knew the situation I was in. I was 2,000 miles from my family, providing the nightly news to a metro area of 250,000 people.
I’d earned the trust of my boss to do my job. I’d earned the trust of local TV viewers to serve the community. And I’d earned the trust of friends I’d made since I’d arrived in town.
But I knew that trust could easily be broken.
If I paid no heed to the outside noise, I might have found myself with no job, no friends, and no spot in the community. I would have been stranded on the high plains with nowhere to turn.
What others thought of me was existentially important. So, I paid attention to those perceptions. And I did my best to influence them.
This process has continued throughout my adult life. As I’ve moved to a new city, adopted a new career, went back to school, and picked up new hobbies, I’ve continued to pay attention to the outside noise.
Often, this has led to frustration. I’ve occasionally seen my goals thwarted by external skepticism. And more than once, doors have slammed in my face as a result.
Still, tuning into the feedback has helped me move forward. Instead of rebelling against adverse perceptions, I can iterate off them. And in doing so, I can increase my chances of getting the next opportunity — all while remaining true to who I am.
If trust is a bridge to opportunity, I’m building the pilings and approaches to that bridge from my side of the divide. And I’m making it easier for the other party to follow suit.
But all this is only possible because I recognize that the divide exists. And because I can see the merit in its inevitability.
We all can find value in this approach. We all would be better served acting like William Wallace in front of his troops than an athlete dismissing the media members in the locker room.
So, let’s get to it.
The outside noise matters. Use it well.