From meager beginnings to rewarding results

I've been thinking lately about how much of our lives are shaped by the stories we're given about ourselves.

Some arrive as compliments. Others arrive as labels.

The unfortunate thing is that children rarely know the difference.

I grew up collecting labels:

• Dyslexia

• ADHD

• Dyspraxia

A handful of others depending on who was doing the evaluation.

At a time when many of these conditions were still poorly understood, the solutions were often imperfect.

I spent portions of my education separated from other students and placed into programs that were intended to help, but often left me feeling different in ways I couldn't yet articulate.

Children can be remarkably perceptive. And remarkably cruel.

It doesn't take many repetitions of a word before you begin wondering whether it might be true.

For a long time, I carried those questions with me.

Not because I believed them completely.

But because part of me wondered.

What if they were right?

Looking back, I can see that much of my early life was spent trying to answer that question.

Not with words. With achievement.

I barely graduated high school on time.

Then spent eight years finding my footing in college.

While many of my friends seemed to know exactly where they were headed, I felt as though I was wandering through possibilities looking for a door that would open.

Eventually, that door became graphic design.

My first jobs were far from glamorous.

At one point, I negotiated for a position by agreeing to use my own computer because the company couldn't provide one.

Not exactly the triumphant beginning I had imagined.

But careers, much like identities, tend to reveal themselves slowly.

One opportunity led to another.

Texas became California.

California became North Carolina.

Small responsibilities became larger ones.

And somewhere along the way, I found myself sitting in a meeting that would unexpectedly change how I viewed success.

We were discussing the challenge of winning new business.

The agency's leadership explained that it often took hours of conversation to build enough trust for a prospective client to move forward.

As they spoke, I remembered something from an earlier agency.

The moment you walked through the front doors, you were greeted by awards.

Plaques.

Trophies.

Recognition displayed on every available surface.

I realized something.

The selling had already begun before anyone said a word.

The awards weren't there to impress people.

They were there to reduce uncertainty.

They communicated competence instantly.

So I suggested we start entering competitions.

At the time, I had absolutely no idea whether we'd win.

But we did.

Then we won again.

And again.

Soon the lobby filled with awards.

The conversations became easier.

The agency grew.

The experiment worked.

For years, I viewed those wins as proof.

Proof that the teachers were wrong.

Proof that the labels were incomplete.

Proof that I belonged.

But age has a way of changing the questions.

Today, I don't think those awards mattered because they proved something to other people.

They mattered because they revealed something to me.

The labels were never the whole story.

They never could be.

No label can fully capture a person.

Not the negative ones.

Not the flattering ones either.

We're always more complicated than that.

Perhaps that's one reason I'm drawn to painting now.

Every portrait begins with an appearance.

• A face

• An expression

• A posture

But the real work begins when you start asking what exists beneath those things.

What fears?

What contradictions?

What longings?

What private victories?

The older I get, the less interested I become in the labels people carry.

And the more interested I become in the person hidden underneath them.

That's where the story always is.