Are you in the “in crowd”? Getting into the In Crowd In high school, I looked up to my classmate Rick Brown, the quintessential cool guy. He was the good-looking captain of the football team and president of the student council. He had a cheerleader homecoming queen girlfriend and was liked by everyone. I envied Rick because he was at the epicenter of the in crowd, and I saw myself as a distant outsider. Years after we graduated, I ran into Rick and we reminisced. I confessed, “I was always envious of you because you were in the in crowd and I was way out.” Rick laughed. “Really?” he came back. “I always thought you were in the in crowd and I was out.” I couldn’t have been more stunned. Here was a guy who had all the accouterments of success, all the things I wished I could be and have. Meanwhile, he was envying me. How insane is that? That serendipitous meeting with Rick proved pivotal for me. That day I realized that the voice in our head that tells us that we are defective or less-than is a liar. A story from the video series The Beatles Anthology illustrates this very dynamic. At the height of the Beatles’ illustrious career, George Harrison decided he wasn’t fit to be in a band as talented as the Beatles. He went to Ringo Starr and told him, “I’m not a real Beatle. You guys are the real Beatles, so I am going to quit the band.” Ringo replied, “I was just thinking the same thing—that you three are the real Beatles and I am the fake, so I will quit the band.” The belief that either George or Ringo were not the real Beatles seems laughable and ludicrous since each of...

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