I’m writing this on an early Sunday morning on a plane heading over to Albuquerque, NM. I’ll be speaking at the state HR conference there this week.
You might be familiar with Albuquerque from the AMC series Breaking Bad. I know I am.
If you’ve taken any of my workshops in Temperament, you know we show the clip from the very first episode of the series as we explore Temperament NT. In it, Walter White, played by Brian Cranston tells his unenthusiastic high school chemistry class that “I like to think of chemistry as the study of change.”
He then demonstrates it with a Bunsen burner, but the students are apathetic. It doesn’t matter. Walter White eventually finds an audience that more than appreciates his chemistry expertise. For all the wrong reasons.
But back to my trip. And thinking about change.
Most of us hate change because we hate being changed. But when we engineer the change to something we want, it’s a lot easier. Even if it’s a big thing.
I’ve never cared for my given name Malcolm. I was named after my dad, but it was a pretty uncommon name for my generation, kids made fun of it, and it’s always been misspelled.
In high school, my girlfriend (and later ex-wife) coined the nickname, Mac. I liked it. And it stuck. When I joined the Navy, everyone knew me as Mac.
Even though it was my Ex that created it, I stayed with Mac all the way up the day in 1999 I got out of the Navy. Realizing I was ready to leave both the Navy and my Ex in the past forever, I went back to my given name of Malcolm.
It took a while for it to stick, particularly with Barb who never knew me by that name. But my new company knew me as Malcolm and among my new civilian co-workers and friends, I was him.
I enjoyed the name up until about 2013. Maybe it was having to spell it for anyone who wasn’t family or friend. I couldn’t use my name as my email address, or I’d never get an email sent to me correctly. So, when we moved from Maryland to Tennessee in 2014, I changed my name back to Mac, but this time, figuring I could call myself whatever I wanted, add the “k” at the end. Which is why you know me today as Mack.
It’s bumpy at times. My mom refuses to call me Mack and some of my longer-term clients had a hard time adjusting, as do my Maryland friends, but now to the world I’m Mack. And of all the things I’ve been called over the years, Mack feels just right!
What’s With the Hat?
Well, as you know from the last few months of posts, I’ve been navigating a sort of delayed mid-life crisis, which isn’t crippling me or enticing me to buy a sports car but has me doing lots of self-awareness work.
Which brings me to the hat.
I’ve had a hate/hate relationship with hats for a long time. When I was a teen, I had great hair. Big hair. I’d wear it parted in the middle and feathered back on the sides. I looked like a cross between John Travolta and Leif Garrett. Considering the amount of gel, blow drying, and hair spray needed to create this wearable work of art, a hat would simply not do.
Then when I joined the Navy, they took my big hair and had to wear a cover, as the Navy refers to a hat, anytime I was outside in uniform. The white cover was known as a “dixie cup” but I always though it resembled an inverted dog bowl. In our work uniforms, we could wear a ball cap with a mesh backing, like a trucker’s hat.
But hats were not me. I couldn’t wait to NOT wear one.
When I got out of the Navy and grew the ferocious beard, I soon realized my hair was about as ferocious as my mother-in-law’s poodle. It grew uneven and worse; I had a severely receding hairline. One day I decided to tap out and shaved my head bald.
It was weird at first. Freaked the hell out of Barb and my kids. But eventually everyone got used to it. Since the ferocious beard now made me look as if my head was mounted on my shoulders upside down, I decided to trim it down to a more debonair van Dyke.
And I went back to a wearing a hat. Part of it was to keep my head from getting sunburned in the Memphis heat. But secondly, I began to feel as though I was becoming a landmark.
Guest at Disney:
Hey honey, where is the ladies room?
Just up there on the right.
Where?
See that bald guy over there eating a turkey leg? It’s just past him.
Hats were fun now. I could wear something that fit my personality. I started with ball caps that had skulls on them. Then I started repping my favorite sports teams. Eventually I created a host of business logos for what is now Boss Builders and started wearing them.
When I made peace with the Navy, I started wearing a “retired Navy” hat if for no other reason that I know it annoys all the old Army retirees when we shop up at Fort Campbell in Kentucky.
But this year, those hats just didn’t feel right anymore. I think one day I was heading out the door and as I put my Navy trucker hat on, I realized I looked like all those old military vets and retirees you see shuffling through the aisles of Walmart a few feet behind their wives. In other words, I started looking like SOMEONE and I am determined to look like ME.
But what hat was really me?
I thought about maybe a cowboy hat but realize that looked worse on me than if I chose to wear an ill-fitting rug instead. I didn’t want to try the straw Panama hat fearing I’d look like a drug lord. And there was no going back to ball caps.
Ironically, I was in the Walmart in Dickson, TN over the summer, cutting through the men’s clothing section to get to the register. As I passed a rack full of cheap hats, one caught my eye. It was a light grey cap known as a flat cap or newsboy. I put it on (crossing my fingers whoever tried it on before me wasn’t carrying lice) and it felt just right. Like it belonged right there on my head. Realizing this new discovery would set me back a whopping $7.95, I kept it. After pulling off the tag as I walked out, I put it back on. Again, it felt just right.
Barb said it looked nice. I decided to wear it to one of my client sites in Nashville where I was doing live workshops once a month. They looked at me sort of puzzled when I started the workshop. I told them I was testing out the hat as a “new look.” Like a pilot episode for a new TV show, I guess. The next month I told them it was permanent. Nobody freaked out. It seemed like seeing me in a new hat wasn’t causing the universe to shift closer to the sun. And again, it felt just right.
I experimented with a couple of new styles, including my new signature, the Peaky Workman in dark gray. I wondered about wearing it when I speak at conferences. So, I put it on and spoke. Nobody seemed to mind. I’m pretty sure they remembered though. Just like they used to:
Hey did you hear the speaker who talked about performance management?
Who was he?
I can’t remember his name, but he was the bald guy who told a lot of stories.
Now I’m the guy IN THE GREY HAT that tells a lot of stories. And occasionally says “ass” and “damn.”
So, two long stories to tell you that if you want to change something about yourself, just do it. Sell it to yourself and as long as you stay consistent and back it up with actions, eventually others will buy it.
So long as it’s realistic of course. Just because I tell people I’m a stunt double for The Rock, doesn’t necessarily make it true.
What will you change this month? What will bring you closer to YOU?
