You only get 1 backstage pass

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Happy Sunday and thanks for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

I’m gonna let you guys in on a little secret about last week’s newsletter: I finished it at around 6:30am, after coming home from a soca party on Saturday night a bit buzzed and knocking out on my friend’s couch. I locked in after the party, and finished writing and editing so that the newsletter would be out at 9:00 AM BAU (business as usual, thanks corporate America for the lingo 🤣 🤮 ).

To you, though, you got that newsletter in your inbox no problem as you do every week. You had no clue about the process that went into it, what time I started writing or what time I hit publish - and frankly the truth is, you don’t care.

The Behind-The-Scenes Sneak Peek

As I thought about the insane work that went into ensuring that last week’s newsletter went out on time, I began to think about the fact that there’s so many things in this world that we don’t know the story behind. We live in a world of finished products, of polished goods and of fully baked cakes, so unless it’s really important to us personally, the process of getting to what we actually see 👀 doesn’t really matter to us.

We’ve been conditioned to expect certain things in life, not remembering the processes and work that goes into them. I think even more importantly than that, though, is the fact that not every finished product has the same behind-the-scenes.

Just like in mathematics or computer science, there’s different ways to get to the same answer in everything in life, and when you begin to appreciate that, you can begin to appreciate that life itself is about the processes and not actual achievements themselves.

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Appreciating the behind-the-scenes (BTS)

Recently on social media there’s been an surge in the popularity of “BTS” videos where you get to see how your favourite influencers actually make the content that they publish. I think that kind of content goes viral because it’s exactly what we’re looking for when we look at social media influencers.

We’re looking for someone to relate to, someone that shows us this idea of “you-can-do-it-too” and it feels a lot more real when you can see someone’s process. Behind the scenes content is so engaging because we’re used to having just one BTS pass - the pass to our own lives - so seeing that vulnerability and hard work instead of just a finished product really catches and holds our attention.

For me, beginning to appreciate that the only all-access pass that I have is to my own life has been so eye-opening, because I can recognize that if there’s THAT much that goes into my own life that people don’t see, just imagine how much happens in every single person you know’s life too.

It helps me to give others grace. It helps me to understand things from the perspective that I can only see the tip of the iceberg, and if you’ve ever seen those graphics with the tip of the iceberg, you’ll know that even if what you see seems like a lot, there can be so much more beneath the surface that you don’t see too.

The Tip of the Iceberg

In reality, we are all walking around as icebergs. We see each other’s highlights, the parts that are visible above the water, but the reality is that 90% of what makes up a person’s journey, struggles, hard work, and sacrifices remain unseen beneath the surface.

When you consider this, you start to view people differently. The person who seems to have it all together might be barely hanging on. The one who appears to be an overnight success might have been grinding for years in the shadows. That polished final product you admire had countless revisions, setbacks, and struggles before it ever saw the light of day.

The realization that everyone has a behind-the-scenes story should inspire both empathy and gratitude. Empathy because you’ll understand that no one’s journey is as easy as it looks, and gratitude because you’ll begin to appreciate your own journey even more, knowing that everything you’re going through is shaping you into your best self.

Conclusion

One of the best pieces of advice that I love to share is “don’t make fun of someone for trying”. When you see someone failing in public - whether it’s trying out a new career path, learning a new workout in the gym or learning a new instrument - lift them up instead of laughing at their ability to try.

This, for me, falls in the same vein as appreciating the concept of the back-stage pass to your own life.

That person that you saw who just struggled to do 1 pull-up in the gym? Maybe he’s been trying to get to complete his first one and that was a celebratory moment rather than an embarrassing moment. That new artiste whose new song you just listened to and thought it wasn’t your favourite? Maybe she’ll be winning Best New Artiste at the Grammy’s one year.

In the same way that you expect others to somehow give you grace when you’re having a bad day, or to have patience with you because of whatever situation you’re in at any given moment, you should also consider that other people are going through something too at any given moment - sometimes even at the same time as you.

Consider that everyone that you meet is putting on a performance, and that they’re the only one with a backstage pass to know what’s going on behind the scenes. Some have less behind the scenes than others, but you still can’t take for granted that they don’t have a lot going on.

Learning that, appreciating that and treating people you interact with in life with that idea in mind is tantamount to building relationships founded on emotional understanding, that I truly think is missing in this day and age and is something that we should all strive for as we live through our shared human experience.

Until next Sunday,

Justin