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A.J. Jacobs performs immersive experiments and writes about them.
In The Year of Living Biblically, he tried to follow every rule in the Bible—right down to stoning people (with very small pebbles… but still). In Drop Dead Healthy, he wore a protective helmet while walking the streets of Manhattan.
But it was an article he wrote for Esquire that stuck with me.
An experiment in radical candor—saying exactly what he thought, all the time. He learned a lot. But the useful takeaway wasn’t brutal honesty. It was something he called radical positive honesty.
Why are we quicker to tell someone they have spinach in their teeth than to tell them they look great?
When people think about honesty, they default to criticism.
“No offense, but…”
“Sorry, I have to say this…”
We feel compelled to correct.
If you’re being honest, you need to be positively honest as well. That means, if you think to yourself, that’s a great hat, a yummy sandwich, or an excellent coffee, you need to say it.
Otherwise, you’re lying by omission.
Keeping praise bottled up, is just plain dishonest.
Sly
“I didn’t have friends. I never went to a party, a bar. Nothing.”
But on New Year’s Eve 1970, Sylvester Stallone found himself in Times Square. He looked around at the crowds of people and said to himself, “every one of these people wants to be somebody. Better go home and start working hard, ‘cause this is your competition.”
But get to work on what?
He’d come from a broken family. His mother told him, “The only reason you’re here is because the hanger didn’t work.” He’d been programmed to think, maybe everyone’s mother is like this. His father’s advice, which Stallone used as a line in Rocky, was “you don’t have much brains, so you better start using your body.”
An aptitude test he took at 16 only reinforced this idea. It said he had a number of deficiencies and should look at a career as an electricians’ assistant or a tabs sorter.
What the hell is a tabs sorter?
But Sylvester felt that all he had was his brain. Maybe not the kind that thrived in school, but the part of him that was different, that was worth something, was his imagination. He had an early interest in painting. He loved the movies. Story and spectacle.
Eventually, he was pulled into an audition.
In Sly, Stallone tells a story about that first acting gig. He got the lead in Death of a Salesman, Biff. He said, “There was a Harvard professor in the audience that came up and said ‘you should think of this as a career. You should really study this.’”
Stallone said, “That moment, changed the course of my life.”
It didn’t make him a success, but it made him feel like success was possible. And with that big imagination, he could see it.
He couldn’t land a professional gig, but those words kept ringing in his ears, that he could and should do this.
So he decided, if he couldn’t land an acting job, he’d create one for himself. And over the course of just three days, the script for Rocky was born.
Writer, director, actor. Who else does that?
The list is pretty short. And none of it happens without those kind words, the encouragement, not from parents or friends, but from a stranger who said one honest thing at the right time.
Simply telling them the truth when you see something with promise. Not greatness but the potential for greatness.
Not when it’s undeniable.
When it’s still a maybe.
Because that’s when people are most likely to quit.
You see something good in someone and keep it to yourself?
That’s a missed opportunity.
One Of these
Rodney Dangerfield had a bit about this.
“Like everyone else in showbiz, I like applause, but I’ll tell ya, there’s something that’s more important than applause. It’s just when I walk off, if you’d all just give me one of these.”
Dangerfield flashes the okay sign, thumb and forefinger together in a circle.
The audience laughs.
Of course, that laughter is what he’s really after, but that okay sign can mean a lot.
“Tomorrow you’ll say to yourself, ‘Hey, that guy last night was alright. I should’ve given him one of these.”
Not right now, he says, on the way out. Just a quickie, it doesn’t mean nothing to you, but it means something to me, he explains.
“When I see the other guys, they get a lot of these.” He flashes the sign again. “I never get one of these.”
But, as he points out, the audience might not want to. They’d sit there thinking, “Him??? One of these???” motioning the okay sign once again. “Never, not him.”
It’s how we withhold our praise.
***
There is a gentleman I think of often but have only met once. He must be nearing 80, with a son about my age.
After throwing a few innings to close out a tournament, he approached me as I walked to my car. He was headed home with his son, a player from the other team.
“Hey, great game out there. You’ve played great this whole tournament.”
“Oh, thanks. Thank you.” I said, as I slowed my commute just a bit.
“You guys played great too.” I said.
He took another step towards me and lowered his voice just a bit.
“You know, you’ve got a great delivery. The movement is there. Just don’t let these coaches,” he motioned towards my dugout, “overuse you like that. It’s too many innings. Take care of that arm.”
I always think of that moment when I see players on competing teams. They deserve to know.
Like A.J. Jacobs said, if you aren’t radically positively honest, that feeling, that regret, it’ll linger.
It doesn’t mean nothing to you, but it means something to them.
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