If You’re The Smartest Person In The Room, Do This ASAP

Hey there!

Sometimes, we find ourselves being of service to others with our knowledge. Sometimes, we find ourselves struggling to keep up with what others know. And we can find ourselves anywhere in between on the knowledge and experience spectrum.

But if you’re finding yourself constantly saying “I knew that already,” here’s what you need to do…right now.


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Hope this helps!

David

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hey there it’s David H Lawrence the 17th
I got an email this morning from someone
who’s like how do you know all this
stuff I’m never gonna learn any of this
stuff you know like stuff and you find
stuff and you share stuff a lot of stuff
but I thought to myself immediately well
I’m okay thank you I’m sure that you
know a bunch of stuff
mr. email writer that you share with
others I don’t know exactly what your
expert in but you know you have
certainly life experience and you know
it’s it’s not a race and when we start
to look at it as a race we tend to start
to look and see how far ahead or behind
someone we are and when you have
something to offer you find yourself
being of service to other people that’s
a wonderful feeling and I feel that way
a lot sometimes you are saying to
somebody who’s who’s giving you
information wait wait what you can do
that seriously I find myself doing that
a lot with people who know a lot about
the stuff that I’m interested in more
than I do and it depends on where you
are in the process but sometimes you’ll
find yourself in a room where the people
in the room could use your help or could
benefit from your experience and then
sometimes you find yourself in a room
where the people in there know a heck of
a lot more than than than you do and you
can find yourself kind of struggling to
keep up even to the point where you go
oh yeah yeah I knew I knew that I knew
that when you really didn’t know that
but if you find yourself more often in a
place where you’re saying to yourself
yeah I knew that you go to an event or
you take a class or you you go to
somebody’s speaking engagement maybe
you’re at a convention and somebody’s on
the schedule and go home
I’m interested in that I wonder what
level
teaching it
and you go and you find yourself gone
yeah you know I wish I wish I knew that
this was what they were saying because
this is stuff I already know it happened
to me a few weeks ago at a union event
about podcasting I thought oh well great
maybe the union will have some new like
maybe they’re gonna be covering
podcasting in a new contract I don’t
know but it turned out to be hey this is
called podcasting and you can do this
and you know like I I found myself in a
situation that I kind of
I kind of felt embarrassed about I was
like sitting there and getting a little
frustrated that there wasn’t anything
challenging me that there wasn’t
anything going on and it brought to mind
that if you’re in a position where
you’re saying okay check
I knew that check I got that check I I
know that but I know a better version of
that if you find yourself in that
position a lot because it’s a
comfortable position to be in you know
you’re confident I know what I’m doing
if you find yourself in that position a
lot I have a challenge for you and that
is challenge yourself if you find that
you’re in the room and you are the
smartest person in the room or the most
knowledgeable person in the room or in
that you know area where most of the
people there are still learning the
stuff that you already know
first of all certainly help them if they
ask for it and if they want it and if
they can use it but find yourself
another room find yourself a room where
you don’t know everything
where you are you know a little confused
a little challenged and can stretch I
mean that’s the way you learn in all
cases you’re presented with something
that you don’t know and you’re like okay
I want to learn this so tell me more
about this find yourself in those rooms
more often
and you’ll feel a lot better about where
you are on your journey and you know the
accomplishment that you feel when you
when you get to know something and it’s
like oh that’s how that works
is to me just gold it’s just gold so if
you find yourself the smartest person in
most of the rooms that you walk in find
another room be challenged be baffled be
scrunchy you make your eyes scrunch it
what is he saying
wait wait what raise your hand ask a
question get more knowledge
don’t let that thirst for knowledge ever
be slate I just love learning new things
I remember one morning last year I
decided I was gonna figure out how to do
BOTS you know conversation BOTS
messaging BOTS on Facebook Messenger and
I just set aside a day and I started
looking online for resources and I
talked to some friends who knew how to
do it and this wasn’t the kind of thing
where friends were calling me and going
how do you do bots and I was able to
tell them it was like I didn’t I really
didn’t know anything I learned from
scratch and by the end of the day I had
built my first bot and it felt awesome
it felt great that that moment of
accomplishment certainly it feels good
when you can help other people you have
the knowledge you need to help other
people and it feels great to be
respected as someone who is resourceful
and willing to help maybe a little bit
wise I don’t know it feels great when
people say that to me
but what feels even better is when I’m
in a room with people that know a lot
more than I do and I’m learning from
them so I challenge you to do that what
are your thoughts on that wherever
you’re watching this video let me know
in the in the comments below are you
comfortable in a situation where you’re
kind of struggling to keep up or does
that make you really like anxious and
are you also one of those people that
loves being in a situation where you can
help other people you know what’s going
on and so you hang out with people you
can help I’d love to know what your
thoughts are in the comments but
and I love the fact that you’re watching
these once-a-day videos if you’d like to
subscribe to my YouTube channel and get
noticed when these videos come out my
head click on it if there’s no head
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you if you click on that frame right
there I’m David H Lawrence the 17th I so
appreciate you watching these videos and
I will talk to you tomorrow.

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Responses

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  1. Hi David,
    Yes and yes! I love helping people learn new things, and I love learning new things even more. My thought is if you stop learning and growing, you die. It makes me sad to come across people who think they know everything about everything. Takes the joy out of life. I recently attended a talk given by an Internationally known forensic artist, and it was fascinating!!! I learned so much about many of the aspects of forensics. She also teaches people how to draw, both forensically and for fun. I am not interested in drawing but it might be fun just to take the class to see how it’s done… part of the adventure of life.

  2. Have you ever taken the Clifton StrengthsFinder? Learner is in my top five strengths (along with Input). So this video strongly resonates with me. Learning, for me, is not a challenge, but gratifying.

    Thanks for the videos. They have become part of my daily learning. And it’s been a pleasure as I encounter the various topics to pass them on to friends I think could benefit.

    1. Taken it? Yes. Lived it? Every day. Betsy is a Gallup certified StrengthsFinder coach – she made me take it when we first started dating (and thankfully was very pleased when she got back the results…) We’ve also done alignment meetings of our staff. LOVE StrengthsFinder.

  3. I love helping people when asked about something in my wheelhouse. But I have been in the same situation of taking a class that was 101 and I was already at 401 level. I love learning new things. Two goals for this year is learning live animation, VO marketing, and some accent training. It should be challenging, interesting and fun.

  4. David, I am constantly looking for other rooms (I’be been through a lot of them already.) My latest was a wonderful experience in a room called ACX Masterclass; so good I’ve gone back several times.

    I’m currently traversing another fascinating room, VO2GoGo. There’s a common denominator there, somewhere. 😉

  5. Yes! That happens to me and recently I was in a situation where I CLEARLY didn’t know everything and it was such a foreign feeling, but I came home and said “okay, let me call my friend who can teach me about this thing I don’t know that well, and soon I’ll know it.” And THATS how you get more tools in your wheelhouse, by leaning in to the unknown!

  6. Hi David!

    Scott Adams (author of the “Dilbert” comic strip) has a great passage in his book “The Dilbert Principle” where he pointed out that “we’re all idiots at something”. I can build a gaming PC that’ll knock your socks off, but I don’t know the first thing about ProTools. If I have to talk about something going on with my car, I know there’s some parts under the hood I’m super-smart about, and some I have no earthly idea. It’s humbling to remember this, and I try to show gratitude to people when they’re teaching me something I don’t know.

    When it’s my turn to teach people, a lot of times they’re intimidated by technology. I have to remind them that computers are stupid. Really, they are! They’re a dumb piece of machinery that has all this complicated stuff inside of them and it’s all geared towards helping them sit there and wait for you to tell them what to do.

    Often my mantra is, “It shouldn’t be this hard!” People blame themselves when a computer goes bonkers and I remind them that things still aren’t as easy to use as they could be.

    Great video! Thanks for posting it. I hope to always keep learning new things. Forever.

  7. Reminds me of what I once heard at a T. Harv Ekar seminar: “The three most dangerous words in the English language are ‘I know that.'”

    Cuts two ways—

    1) okay, but are you LIVING it? and
    2) go explore what you DON’T know

    Thanks for another great video!

  8. Yikes! I’m nearly always the person in the room with the sponge-head on lately. But it is a good feeling when I have the ahahhh moments. It’s also nice to be the one who knows the stuff though, I love the thrill of showing someone something they didn’t know before and the excitement of the “lightbulb moment” gives me joy! I suppose its all about how you handle being in the room as the one who knows. You can lord it over people, or help them out and lift them up. I’m thankful you’re a lifter upper! Cheers!

  9. Love the video David. I enjoy helping others learn what I know. I think that’s why I like teaching. The reality is though that if I’m not challenging my mind it will become lethargic like my body does when I don’t mix up my exercise routines.