You Look Like a Carburetor: Why Perception Is Within Us

If a stranger came from across a crowded room and said to you “Hey, you look like a carburetor,” what would you do? I can imagine you’d furrow your brow, probably say “What??” while thinking “this guy is loony tunes.”

What if you are a 110-lb woman who’s 5'2" tall, or a 160-lb man who’s 5’-10", and someone called you obese. You’d respond similarly to when the guy called you a carburetor. 'What are they talking about? May be in Ethiopia I'm corpulent at best.'

What if it was your best friend calling you a porker when you wear size 4 pants or have a 32-inch waist. You’d immediately make them to sit down and drink some ice water for surely he/she has a fever making him/her delirious. What they are saying just doesn’t make sense!

You know the falsehood of those two statements because no where inside of you do you believe you are a carburetor nor believe that you’re dangerously overweight for your frame. This is the key. I know you are not these things.

What if someone, someone who knows you well, says you’re lazy or you are not doing your best. These two hypothetical statements are likely to hurt anyone’s feelings, especially from a person they like and admire. You may even be mad. I know I would, because I did.

Last week, I had a very low moment. My Dad is also my business partner. He started our engineering firm, yet now is a minor partner in his retirement. With the tight economy cutting our clients down to a few, he said “Your traveling too much thus clients are thinking you don’t work hard enough.” I blew up like Old Faithful. I started defending myself, yelling at my Dad. And yes, I started crying too because that’s my release mechanism for pent up stress.

In looking back at this horrible day when I’m yelling at my 70-yr old father, I am totally embarrassed. What if my Dad had said, “Your traveling too much, thus our clients think you are a carburetor.” I would have tilted my head to the side and said “what?” There would have been no volatile emotion, no screaming at a 70-yr old man, no crying in the parking lot of our clients’ office.

I blew up because somewhere inside me, the economic reduction our business touched my insecurities about being a good business owner. Somewhere I felt like a failure for having to let staff go. Somewhere inside, I am thinking I am not working hard enough to get more new projects.

I assure you, I don’t know anyone else who wakes up at 4:15am, rolls into work at 6:00am and stays until 7pm. I work 52-hrs by Thursdays. I can prove, without a doubt, that I am not lazy.

I have rationed my time to complete all my work by Thursday so I can leave on Friday to do leadership seminars to colleges. These talks with students I feel are drastically needed in our nation’s economic downturn. The college students are beginning to doubt their abilities to get jobs, thus doubt the wisdom of choosing engineering as a career. In my eyes, if the young lose faith in engineering as a solid career, then America has lost a great hope for the future. Thus, I drag myself out of bed at 4:15am so I can be in front of wide-eyed students looking to me for any sign of hope on a Friday afternoon in Some Collegetown, USA.

Even though I know it is noble to devote myself to the betterment of the future of engineering, I have insecurities about my business profit being way down, thus the statement of my not working hard enough was just a knife into an insecure scab of my psyche. In seeing how I reacted, I now see the weakness in my mind that I must fortify.

I have to affirm to myself I am doing everything I can this week at work. I have a plan to make new connections, and to maintain the clients we have. I have to reinforce to myself that I 150% hard working and determined to succeed in business. It’s all inside of me. The power of perceiving my world is inside of me.

It’s a new line of thinking that will take conscious effort and time to absorb, for your first knee-jerk reaction is likely boiling emotion. Yet try, next time someone says a remark which starts to irk you, try to pause and see what hurts inside of you. You’ll see that you, and only you, give their comment validity. If you can react as though they called you a “carburetor,” then you’ve mastered your insecurities.

This is what that would look like:
Dad: “Solange, when you travel every week, our client’s think you’re a carburetor.”
Solange: “Hmm Dad, I’m not sure what you mean by that. It sounds like they think being gone one day a week makes me a carburetor. Is that it?”
Dad: “Well, I think it’s about their calling when you are not there that makes it look like you’re a carburetor.”
Solange: “OK, they’re used to getting people on the phone immediately. I can see that. How can we fortify to them that I am actually not a carburetor, and that I’m here 4-days a week from 6am to 7pm to assist them with any issues.
Dad: “Well, I guess we can emphasize that you have a cell phone which gets emails at anytime.”
Solange: “Thanks Dad, I’ll start being more communicative with our clients on my travel dates. Hopefully, this will negate any thoughts of me being a carburetor.”

Now replace every instance of “a carburetor” above with “not dedicated.” In your life, I want you to do the reverse. Feel free to use my carburetor. I don't know what a carburetor looks like nor really what it does for a car. All I know is I am not one.

PS-You’re the best looking carburetor I’ve ever seen. Take your best self out there to be the master your insecurities baby!