When I finished my presentation on sharing, I was distraught. One might have called me “storm-cloudy.” I’m relatively sure I didn’t wear it on my face. (I was told it went very well, but as you’ll see in a minute, that kind of immediate validation is unfortunately not as sticky as it could be.)

The point is: I could not wait to be by myself.

This wasn’t an issue of preparation. I hit all of my beats—knew the entire story I was telling A to Z, pacing, you name it, and I had it prepped. And yet.

What happened? The immediate post-mortem in my head went something like this:

• I was too short by about 10 minutes. This never happens with my talks. In fact, it felt like I was moving too slow!
• The room was not with me. I could feel the disembodied version of me taking the bird’s-eye view and seeing people (who I locked eyes with) kind of getting it. Certainly not in the way that I had anticipated.
• I didn’t like the lighting in the room. It reminded me of the opening office sequence in Joe vs. the Volcano. (It was on cable a lot.) Cranky bright fluorescents suggesting a visit to the world’s worst clinic and not a space to hang out in for an hour.
• I used far too much hairspray (don’t ask).

My standards have traditionally been too serious and strict. My expectations (as my family would tell you) are too constrained, so when they aren’t precisely met, the storm clouds start moving in. This is a personality challenge for those who largely derive their self-worth from achievement. (My poor youngest daughter has inherited this insidious trait, and she knows exactly who it came from.)

No amount of “hey nice job!” or “thanks for sharing!” was going to mollify my mood. I was “in the pit,” as I like to say. Right after my talk, the conference was hosting its closing celebration, and I was not in the mood to party. I had let myself down. So, I went full Charlie Brown and hid in my car.

I run a remote-sharing CUSO that celebrates and lives the cooperative ethos the credit union industry is famous for. I repeated this to myself as I put my head against the steering wheel of the rental car. I was completely convinced I needed to be alone so I could pillory myself and replay the talk ad nauseam rather than be a typical, decent person and have a proper goodbye with the folks I had spent a few days with, to say nothing of the fact that I was literally there to help our company’s awareness campaign.

It’s hard to be aware of something that’s invisible.

We’re losing connection

According to data from the Survey Center on American Life, which has tracked friendship trends since 1990, we have pulled inward at a record pace. Between 1990 and today, the percentage of Americans who report having no close friends has quadrupled. Phones, social media, a pandemic, and the decline of community groups like religious attendance, clubs, or leagues have famously contributed to this pull inward.

Nicholas Epley is a behavioral science professor at the University of Chicago. He has been studying (for lack of a better phrase) the loneliness epidemic we’re currently experiencing. In their 2014 study, “Mistakenly Seeking Solitude,” he and co-author Juliana Schroeder conducted an experiment with people who use the Chicago commuter trains as a literal vehicle for understanding loneliness.

He put them into three groups. Solitude, connection, and the control group (do what you would normally do). Unsurprisingly, folks who were told to communicate were the happiest bunch. The surprising fact is that most of the people who participated projected they would be the least happy if forced to talk to someone during their commute. We are terrible at predicting what will make us happy.

Now cut to Charlie Brown in his car.

I had literally just presented this fact (yes, the Nick Epley story is in my talk), and there I was…doing the exact thing I just told a room full of people not to do. I peeled myself off my steering wheel, and left my Linus blanket in the car, strode back into the conference center in an effort to (at the very least) show my face and my dumb hair one last time.

About 1 minute after I entered the room, a smiling man approached me and said some very nice things about my talk. He was just…grateful. I didn’t know this person, and he got specific about why he liked it. For those reasons, I could feel the storm clouds dissipate—which comports with another finding from Epley and Schroeder: the recipient of the conversation (me!) ended up just as happy as the person who started it. I made a connection I would have otherwise NOT made if I had succumbed to my insularity.

Open the door for collaboration and sharing

This connection is a blip. It’s ONE person. But my goodness, that person would not have had the occasion to share with me if I wasn’t there. I wouldn’t have had the privilege of listening to him tell his story if I weren’t there.

It will likely never be my default to launch headfirst into a conversation with people I don’t know. It takes more effort for me to convince myself it’s going to be good for me. But doing what I do for a living and learning what I have about the concept of sharing has given me the tools to eventually do what I know will be good for me: talking with, working with, and sharing with others. I got out of my car for the credit unions I serve, and for me. I can and will keep speaking without hesitation on the value of sharing.

If you’re someone who thinks that collaboration is a worn-out industry buzzword, then you wouldn’t be alone. Give it a flip. Try “sharing” instead. When we share, the impetus is on us to start the conversation. To effectively start a collaboration. We don’t have to put pressure on others to do the work first.

If you feel like you and your organization are better off alone, give yourself permission to explore what it might look like to first share, then consider collaboration. You might just find that you incidentally make yourself and others happier.