Take A Look In The Mirror
Are you brave enough to examine your own behaviour? An ancient Greek aphorism is to "know thyself". Throughout history, there are examples of famous people keeping diaries and journals to record their thoughts.
One of the most famous was Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from AD 161 to 180. His ‘Meditations’ were a series of personal writings, recordings of his private life. He would reflect daily on his actions in an effort to improve his character, and how he dealt with the people he faced each day. It’s remarkable that a man who was, at the time, by far the most powerful man in the world, went to such lengths to improve himself.What has a Roman emperor got to do with DJs?
I was inspired to write this article by various DJ groups on Facebook, where a lot of DJs have been stating that over the last year, they have been receiving far more abusive comments from guests than ever before. This surprised me, as it isn’t something I’ve noticed, and in general, the guests at my events have been as pleasant and friendly as ever.
I then asked several DJs I know of their own experiences over the past year, and the answers corresponded with my own experience, in that they hadn’t noticed an increase in rude customers. However, the more DJs I asked, the more I noticed a pattern developing. I found that the DJs who hadn’t noticed an increase in rudeness were very experienced in terms of the number of events they’d performed at,
had been DJing for many years and, most importantly, tended to be more relaxed in their mannerisms and body language.
The DJs who agreed that they were seeing more abusive guests seemed to be less experienced and/or had been DJing for less time.
Let’s hop back even further into the time machine. The first modern human was around roughly 200,000 years ago. We all have around 10,000 ancestors who lived risky, stressful lives in a world that was actively trying to kill them. Almost every one of them was deathly afraid of everything – for a reason. All our ancestors (except possibly for the last four or so generations) faced irregular food supplies, daily physical danger, disease, poverty, predators, high injury rates and social violence. For most of human history, you could die from a single scratch.
Our most optimistic ancestors tended not to pass their genes on in the human gene pool.
- “That dark cave looks fun. Let me see what's making that growling sound...”
- “Our crop yield was great. Let's take a break from planting for a year...”
- Or even, “It's the 1920s and there's nothing safer than the stock market. I know where I'm going to put all of our money...”
So, we are biologically designed to be pessimists. And, for most of history, it has saved our lives. Life is far less risky now than for every one of our ancestors. However, even successful, wealthy, intelligent people default to scarcity thinking if they're not paying attention. For top performers, there’s an enormous cost in not upgrading a pessimistic outlook on life.
“Optimism and hope are not the same. Optimism is the belief that the world is changing for the better. Hope is the belief that, together, we can make the world better.” – Jonathan Sacks
And with this optimism comes confidence.
If you feel you’ve had many rude guests over the past year or two, is there a possibility that the common denominator is you?
I realise that question is not going to be well received by many. But sometimes, when problems are occurring regularly, instead of blaming others, the wise move is to look at yourself. At the very least, consider the possibility that the problem is starting with you.
If you reacted angrily to that last paragraph, then you may have answered the question.
One of the most famous was Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from AD 161 to 180. His ‘Meditations’ were a series of personal writings, recordings of his private life. He would reflect daily on his actions in an effort to improve his character, and how he dealt with the people he faced each day. It’s remarkable that a man who was, at the time, by far the most powerful man in the world, went to such lengths to improve himself.What has a Roman emperor got to do with DJs?
I was inspired to write this article by various DJ groups on Facebook, where a lot of DJs have been stating that over the last year, they have been receiving far more abusive comments from guests than ever before. This surprised me, as it isn’t something I’ve noticed, and in general, the guests at my events have been as pleasant and friendly as ever.
I then asked several DJs I know of their own experiences over the past year, and the answers corresponded with my own experience, in that they hadn’t noticed an increase in rude customers. However, the more DJs I asked, the more I noticed a pattern developing. I found that the DJs who hadn’t noticed an increase in rudeness were very experienced in terms of the number of events they’d performed at,
had been DJing for many years and, most importantly, tended to be more relaxed in their mannerisms and body language.
The DJs who agreed that they were seeing more abusive guests seemed to be less experienced and/or had been DJing for less time.
Let’s hop back even further into the time machine. The first modern human was around roughly 200,000 years ago. We all have around 10,000 ancestors who lived risky, stressful lives in a world that was actively trying to kill them. Almost every one of them was deathly afraid of everything – for a reason. All our ancestors (except possibly for the last four or so generations) faced irregular food supplies, daily physical danger, disease, poverty, predators, high injury rates and social violence. For most of human history, you could die from a single scratch.
Our most optimistic ancestors tended not to pass their genes on in the human gene pool.
- “That dark cave looks fun. Let me see what's making that growling sound...”
- “Our crop yield was great. Let's take a break from planting for a year...”
- Or even, “It's the 1920s and there's nothing safer than the stock market. I know where I'm going to put all of our money...”
So, we are biologically designed to be pessimists. And, for most of history, it has saved our lives. Life is far less risky now than for every one of our ancestors. However, even successful, wealthy, intelligent people default to scarcity thinking if they're not paying attention. For top performers, there’s an enormous cost in not upgrading a pessimistic outlook on life.
“Optimism and hope are not the same. Optimism is the belief that the world is changing for the better. Hope is the belief that, together, we can make the world better.” – Jonathan Sacks
And with this optimism comes confidence.
If you feel you’ve had many rude guests over the past year or two, is there a possibility that the common denominator is you?
I realise that question is not going to be well received by many. But sometimes, when problems are occurring regularly, instead of blaming others, the wise move is to look at yourself. At the very least, consider the possibility that the problem is starting with you.
If you reacted angrily to that last paragraph, then you may have answered the question.
