How to handle praise

Charlie was used to the fact that his life was a failure. He had never done good in school. He had been playing the guitar for years but was never confident enough to perform in public. He had been in a soccer team for a while but when he realized that he was the worst player in the team he quit. After school, he passed through several jobs and stuck with one that didn’t fulfil him but paid the bills. Even though, he had had several girlfriends he had never been the world greatest loverman either. But somehow he was hanging on. 

He didn’t realize that his whole life was about to change when he picked up his guitar at a friend’s birthday party and played a song he had written. He had never been able to move the masses until that day. All the sudden, everybody came up to him telling him: “Wow, that’s so awesome, that’s so great” Never before had he heard people tell that to him.

A friend of his had videotaped his performance and put it on Youtube. It received 30 000 hits from all over the world and the comments were most encouraging: “Vaya canción una maravilla.” “This is awesome, publish it on CD.” “Dieser Song rockt!” “Tres cool”. At first, it seemed very scary to him, how fast the video was spreading around the world. But then, it sunk in: He was actually great at something! 

The dreams, which he had thrown in the garbage as a kid, came back to him. He started imagining himself on stage as the greatest guitar god, playing at the same festivals as his childhood heroes (at least those who hadn’t killed themselves at 27). Mentally he even prepared the thank-you-speech he would give when receiving the Grammy awards.

For the next two weeks, he felt like flying. He was very creative in those days, writing a new song every day. He couldn’t wait to get home from work to pick up his guitar and work on another song. For the first time, life seemed easy to him. 

Then, one night he played his new songs to the girl he had secretly been in love with for ages, but she considered him only a friend. She had been the inspiration for most of his songs. She listened to his songs and then told him: “It’s quite nice. A bit like Coldplay meets U2. Maybe not the greatest song ever, but it’s nice.”

For the first time, Charlie got really angry at her. How could she say: “Not the greatest song ever!” Could she not see that he was the greatest guitar god! What did she know about music anyway! Then, he started to think. Maybe she was right, maybe that was crap. He got angry at himself for believing that he was the greatest guitar god. Why had he ever thought so? A month ago, he would have been the happiest man in the world after hearing her comment. Now he was devastated, he wanted to throw his guitar out of the window. It occurred to him that he had been used to failure all his life but not to praise. That was why a simple comment like “great song” had made him believe he was the greatest guitar player in the world. A simple comment on Youtube had changed his whole perception. He had learned how to live with failure, he realized, now he had to learn how to live with success.