When People Are “Wrong”
Last week I gave a free consult to a prospective client and the next morning I had an angry, accusatory email in my inbox. What in the heck happened?! Well, I was honest and encouraging and supportive (for free), but I also conveyed that I didn’t feel like we were the right fit. Maybe there were hurt feelings? Maybe I really was the horrible coach she said I was? I’m not really sure, but I still had to coach myself by asking what I could learn from this situation. How is this happening FOR me instead of TO me? When I reflected back over the past several weeks I had quite a wake-up call.
I’ve been acting like a bit of a bully lately. No I haven’t been beating kids up on the playground or abusing anybody in my life. But in moments when I’ve been unhappy with a particular service or product that I’ve received or with the way somebody treated me, I’ve been very vocal and feeling very entitled about how wrong they were, how right I was, and how I expected them to fix it. Maybe that sounds fair to some people, and I agree that we need to be able to voice our dissatisfaction if someone or something disappoints us. However, it’s about HOW we go about doing it.
The key is to see every moment as an opportunity. Each experience, “good” and “bad,” is simply a means to teach us how to love ourselves and others in a more profound way. Loving ourselves and others doesn’t mean making anybody “wrong” simply because we’re disappointed. If I expect to live a loving, abundant life then I need to adopt of a mindset of trusting that I will always get what I need, even if I may not always get what I want. So, in those disappointing moments we can simply say, “What’s the most loving approach for myself and the other person(s)?” If you take a second to ask yourself that question on a regular basis, the most loving approach will also become the most natural one.
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