Your guide to a healthier perspective of life
Don’t try to change others. Don’t try to control their actions or reactions. You can’t do it, only they can and they will only choose to change when they are ready.
If you focus your energy on changing others you will frustrate yourself and you’ll frustrate them. Basically, you’ll be wasting your time while eroding the relationship.
Instead, focus on how you respond to others. Focus on what you can control – yourself – and learn to let the rest go.
There is a difference between nice people and good people. A person can appear nice or even charismatic, but actually be a “bad” person. That’s not always the case, in fact, if someone appears nice they usually are good as well. But you should not confuse the two. Let me explain…
Good is more important than nice. Being good involves making the best decisions with the information at hand, even when those decisions may not be the most popular. This means that being good may involve telling somebody something that they do not want to hear, but need to hear. Meanwhile, in order to be considered nice, sometimes you may hide the truth to avoid a difficult discussion, embellish facts to make someone feel good, or verbally agree to something someone else believes in, so that you don’t hurt their feelings or cause conflict.
Be nice and good whenever possible. But when push comes to shove, choose being good over being nice.
There are a lot of hot button topics/issues at any moment in time, some legitimate and some not so much. Being in the United States, we have a remarkable freedom to say what we want. It’s a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t mean that we should abuse that freedom. We shouldn’t say mean or hurtful things as is so often done by the “tough people” on the internet. So with today’s blog post, I wanted to touch on two things I’ve been thinking about lately – 1) stop being so easily offended and 2) don’t apologize unless you really mean it.
First of all, we should always work to improve ourselves and one of the best ways to improve yourself is by improving your happiness. With that logic, removing happiness would be a way to make your life worse then, right? Well, one of the quickest ways to remove happiness from your life is to take offense to the everything around you. Today’s first action step is to not be so easily offended.
In today’s “outrage” and “cancel” culture, people seem to take offense at the most minor issues. If you feel you’ve been wronged, take a moment to think before reacting. Did the other person actually do something terrible to you? Was it done maliciously? Or was it a mistake? Do they even know that you feel this way?
Remember, you can’t control what other people do, you can only control your actions and reactions to them. If you live in America, chances are that you’re better off than the majority of the world and aren’t facing issues to the same extent as someone living in a hut in a third world country. Put your “problems” in perspective and stop being so easily offended.
The second thing that I think many of us should work on is to not be apologetic unless you really mean it. I’m not confrontational. I don’t like conflict, so I avoid it when I can. If you’re like me, you may find yourself apologizing to someone for offending them even if what you did isn’t bad in your eyes. Stop doing that. It’s inauthentic and won’t mean very much if you continue doing the same thing you just apologized for.
Think about why you’re saying sorry before you do next time. If someone is mad at you, don’t say sorry just to get back in their good graces if you don’t believe what you did was wrong. If you feel that what you did was right, you should either stand up for your actions (if it’s something worth “fighting” for) or let it go (if it’s something small). But don’t get defensive. If you are, is it because you are actually the one who offended now? They’re allowed to voice their displeasure and disagreement with you. That’s the whole freedom of speech thing that we talked about in paragraph one.
If you’re allowing yourself to become upset because someone else is offended by something you said or did, take a look in the mirror. Are you perpetuating the cycle of having thin skin? Don’t do exactly what you want others to stop doing. Don’t be offended by something that doesn’t really matter in e grand scheme of life.
To recap, don’t take the little things in life too seriously and try to be sensitive to how others feel. Yes, we have the right to a freedom of speech, but that doesn’t mean that you should try to provoke others. Be nice. Try to be the bigger person. If you change your mind about something you’ve said or done in the past, admit it and apologize to those you have legitimately wronged. And when others disagree with you, learn to let the little things go and instead choose to be happy.
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with…Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.” – Jim Rohn
Does your environment support your goals? Are you hanging out with success-minded people? Are they fair, open-minded, and a positive influence? Take a look at who you spend the most time with. Do their behaviors align with what you have in mind?
When trying to determine what path you and your friends/colleagues are on, you have to look at the big picture. Don’t only look at monetary successes. Money doesn’t make someone happy. It’s one part of the equation, but you also have to take into account family/social life, physical and mental health, etc. Are your friends on the same track as you or are they heading down a path you don’t want to go? If it’s the former, they may be further ahead or further behind you, but if you’re all working towards a common destination, you can all learn, grow, and get to your destination together. If it’s the latter, you should try to help them get back on track (if that’s what they want) or you may need to let that relationship go.
Lastly, don’t make this transactional. Life is about relationships. You should love hanging out with these people! If you don’t love talking with them and spending time with them, why are you doing it? Don’t abuse your relationships or try to “trade up” who you’re hanging out with just to get further ahead in life. Ideally, you will be hanging out with some people who are already where you want to be heading. They can almost serve as a mentor to you (but don’t call them that unless you want to freak them out). You should also help to guide those whom you are in front of, trying to pave a path for their future success. Being at both ends of the spectrum (being the mentee AND the mentor) will keep you motivated, inspired, and still focused on giving back rather than only trying to take from those ahead of you.
When you’re in charge of training someone, the only thing you can do is give them an opportunity to perform. You can show them what is required to thrive in their specific role – what they need to do, best practices, etc. – but you can’t make them do it. You can spend hours explaining the tactics of a position, but you can’t teach someone to have passion, to be curious, or to have a better work ethic. But if they don’t want to do it, or if they just don’t understand/aren’t picking it up quickly enough, you can’t force them to do what you would do. If it’s not working, eventually you will have to do something about it.
Be careful to not make an emotional decision about this. Be objective, but be kind. Are they just not doing something the way that you would do it, but they’re still getting the job done? Is their performance still acceptable? Are they making big enough strides where, even though they aren’t where you need them to be right now, they’re on their way to becoming what you need from them?
After you remove emotions and give their work an honest evaluation, talk with others who know the situation. Make sure you emphasize that they give you their true opinions about the work being completed by the person in question. It’s not about the individual. It should always be about the work and how it affects those around them. Many people are careful to criticize because they like the person they are evaluating or because they fear the other person will find out. But if they don’t let their true feelings be known, they are doing a disservice to the company and even to the individual. After all, maybe this isn’t what the individual wants. Maybe it’s not fulfilling for them and that is why they are not putting in the extra effort to learn and excel at their craft.
Ultimately, you must determine if you’ve done everything in your power (as the trainer/mentor) to help that person succeed. Do they only need to make a few adjustments or is it time to move on? Did you lead them to water? If so, it’s up to them to decide to drink…