Should You Keep That Chip on Your Shoulder?

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary has an informal definition of the phrase “have a chip on one’s shoulder”: “to have an angry or unpleasant attitude or way of behaving caused by a belief that one has been treated unfairly in the past.”

As someone who has a chip on their shoulder, I take this personally. But it is cause for reflection.

Should you have a chip on your shoulder?

Should you be affected by how others view your performance?

Should you be affected by others who are seemingly outperforming you?

I’m a public advocate of Stoicism. Stoicism encourages us to focus on what we can control. You can’t control other people, so it’s best to compete with yourself. Do better than you did yesterday. Push yourself harder. Use your previous accomplishments as your measuring stick rather than other people’s.

I try to keep that as the focus, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have other people in the periphery. When I don’t feel like working hard, I sometimes pull from my memory bank of teachers/ coaches calling me lazy to seek motivation. It works. I want to prove those people wrong. Is that healthy though?

I don’t dream of the day when I can drive around in a Ferrari, giving the middle finger to anyone who ever doubted me. That type of “revenge” is childish. I do, however, use naysayers as motivation to improve things I can control: My own output and attitude.

The science/psychology on this topic is limited. The results that do exist are mixed. You’ll find one paper that claims competition in the workplace will stunt creativity. Others find that athletes who have a chip on their shoulder (ie, were not given a scholarship they thought was deserved) went on to perform better throughout their careers. They stayed humble because they knew everything they had was a result of hard work, and thus continued to work hard to avoid losing it.

We have anecdotal evidence from folks like Michael Jordan who “took it personally” every time someone else was voted as the NBA MVP. It’s revealing how he went out of his way to use vendettas to take his performance to the next level. There’s no doubt that at the time he played, he was the best in the business. Did his competitive spirit propel him to those lights-out performances, or would he have gotten there otherwise with his ruthless training routine?

Did his obsession with “proving others wrong” ultimately detract from the amount of enjoyment he got from the game?

The amount of questions stemming from having a chip on one's shoulders makes it hard to quantify in any scientific setting. But it gives me a window to state my opinion as fact, which is always fun for the reader.

Continuing to extrapolate Jordan’s mentality to the rest of humankind, I’d argue that his obsession with beating others was ultimately what separated him from the 99.9% of athletes.

Competitiveness was merely one tool in his toolbox consisting of natural talent and an insane work ethic. He valued discipline and held himself to a higher standard, leading by example so his teammates would follow suit, resulting in a decade of dominance.

“But, Matt, this was the NBA. Professional athletes need to be ultra-competitive at the highest level ”

That’s true, most of us will never find ourselves defending the NBA championship. But if your goal is to do anything at the highest level, why wouldn’t the same logic that worked for Jordan apply to your respective discipline?

Unfortunately, the answer to the question: “should you keep that chip on your shoulder” may be value-based. I say unfortunately because I think anything close to “it’s a case-by-case thing” is a lazy argument.

Proving others wrong can’t be the end goal. If your goal is to get famous just so the girl who rejected you in college will regret doing so, you’ll never be completely satisfied. There will always be doubters. Getting caught up in the moving target of “silencing the haters” is a surefire way to become a toxic human being.

However, if you find yourself completely obsessed with a certain discipline, and your end goal is to dedicate your life to mastering it, I think it’s a good idea to, at the very least, take notice of those who say you won’t be any good at it.

In this example, you already have a healthy end goal (mastering your craft). You set out to do something productive with your life, and other people come along and say you’re wasting your time. Most people are going to get pissed off by that.

It’s like saying you shouldn’t waste time loving your kid or your spouse because someone else is always going to do a better job of it. If someone came along and said that to you, of course, the appropriate response would be “go fuck yourself”.

The point is, you’re going to have days where you feel discouraged. You’ll be low on energy and the thought will creep into your head, “maybe they were right”. It’s what you do with that thought that matters.

If you say to yourself, “I’m going to be the best at this, and the people who said I wouldn’t are wrong, I have to push through.” Then that chip on your shoulder was a tool you used to keep going.

Proving people wrong is just the icing on the cake. It can’t be the cake itself. But you’re lying to yourself if you can’t admit that it makes success taste a little sweeter.

Well, what do you think?

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