What kind of environment am I creating?

I woke up about 20 minutes ago, my mind focused on work. I spent a large majority of the day working on trying to figure out what my 'JOB' is, how my responsibilities relate to my choices and decisions, and while I feel good about the work I created, I also feel upset with myself for devoting the entire day to the activity when there are other things I could have been working on.

More important things? - I'm not sure.

Possibly I have been procrastinating - or at least part of me *thinks* I might be if I am being completely honest with myself. One thing that is abundantly clear, is that it is difficult for me to concentrate on what I am 'supposed' to prioritize, when  I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to say about my job responsibility (the other important task I 'wanted' to do)

A couple of days ago,  I happened to be listening to a Ziglar podcast, and Tom Ziglar offered this reflective question

How do I create an environment that let's others be the 'best version of themselves', the person they were intended to be.

This hit me as a powerful statement that differs greatly from asking, how can I be the best version of myself. Yes, I do want to be the 'best version of myself', but am I creating an environment around me that allows others to be the best version of themselves?

For example, I can speak and write in very 'verbose ways'. I do this with the intention of being as clear as possible in my message, it is also because of a fear that if I leave out important details my message may get mis-communicated, others may think and believe the 'wrong' thing, not the message I intended to communicate.

On the opposite side I expect others to speak to me in similar verbose ways. Short one sentence answers seem un-necessarily harsh and confusing, causing me to ask multiple back and forth questions, generating comfortableness for me, (and I assume for the other side)

But not everyone is like me; some people work at their best in shorter, less verbose communication, a sort of 'get to the point' methodology. They can be quite frustrated by long, drawn out explanations, and would prefer just a 'yes' or 'no' or one sentence explanation.

The 'best version' of myself is open, and honest, and expresses his ideas with many 'flavor's and colors, but in doing so, those who are different cannot be the best version of themselves in an overly verbose environment.

I suppose it is somewhat like the 'introvert / extrovert' analogy.  If you are an introvert can you be the best version of yourself when thrown into an environment with a bunch of extroverts?

And yet we can control our thoughts, and our choices, we can actively choose to create an environment that allows others to be the best version of themselves, but at the same time we have to face our fears of what will happen when we don't behave in the verbose ways that are comfortable to our own nature.

How do we 'meld' the 2 together so that we can simultaneously create an environment for others without compromising ourselves in the process?

In the end - like everything else, it comes down to the way we choose to see the problem

a) The less verbose person, the person who is accommodated with short sentences, the person who wants you to 'be like them'. Are they the 'mean person'? Are they 'shouting at you' that you are "not good", "not right",that you need to change to make them happy?

b) or Do you see it differently? Are they hurt by something, by some event or past situation that has nothing to do with you, but you shine a light, a bright positive light, and they need help, they want to be part of that light, but they don't know how, they only know how to show the feelings, to direct the feelings toward you, in hopes that you can 'fix it'

People in your life, come asking for you help in at least 2 ways;

1) The 'apologetic' - excuse me sir, can you help me with 'xxx'? - For me these are the easy people to help. They appear kind/considerate and appreciative of whatever help you can offer.

2) The 'mean' - I can't be happy until YOU change your attitude - These people want help too, but they don't express it as such, their anger seems directed straight at you. They are also looking for help but can only express it by showing you how they feel, not expressing it verbally.

My response to #2 is a big challenge, because it can be so overwhelming to handle, and so easy to 'lash back' out to resist the negativity to throw it away, to run away from it. To setup boundaries that prevent me from being 'sucked' in an coerced. These very same behaviors, take me away from being the best version of myself.

It can be very to accept these "types" into my life, and yet the very confidence of positive thinking attracts it, and until I learn to change my own attitude about it, I will be choosing to be stuck in a continuous cycle rather then elevating to be my highest self.

Lessons - Nov 18 2019

Let’s imagine for a minute, that life is a practice. In front of you sits a large set of paths to walk (almost infinite) and as you choose to walk along a path you will undoubtedly encounter obstacles, problems to overcome

You make think you successfully solved a problem and move past it only to discover the exact same problem just a little further down the path. Perhaps it is slightly different, but essentially it is the same problem, and yet the solution causes pain and frustration, why do I have to be ‘here’ again?

If life is a series of lessons and we must ‘learn’ from these lessons in order to move on, then does this mean when we seem to encounter the same ‘problem’ over and over there is something missing? Some lesson we have not have learned?

I can think of at least 3 definite occasions in my adult life where “*stuff*” was taken away from me. In my first job as Quality & Systems Manager, I was ‘on top of the world’, managing our companies quality system, only for new more ‘senior’ people to be hired and I ‘fell’ to the bottom of the totem pole feeling deflated, rejected, and hurting my self-confidence.

Later at CGI, I built myself up, lots of confidence in myself, was having a great time for many years, when again it all falls apart. This time it seemed existing staff needed to ‘exhort’ their more senior experience, taking a project out of my hands and ‘reworking’ it in a way that ultimately would cause the project to fail. (or at least 'fail' from my point of view)

At my current job; I can’t even seem to ‘climb’ the ladder and build myself into being ‘on top’, and yet even STILL, I feel my manager taking away design work from me that I felt I was really making good progress on.

So I essentially am encountering the same situations over and over but I fail to see how I could do anything differently, the new senior people at Mathis, the desire for others to ‘redo’ the project ‘their way’ and a managers need to “take over” do not appear to be ANYTHING in my control.

What is in my control is my response to these events, how much I let them damage and erode my belief in myself, so the lesson I can try to learn is how do I teach myself bounce back quickly after such ‘external’ setbacks?

I'm sorry mom...

When I was a kid, I would see my mom very angry. I never understood where all the anger came from. Some one or something would set her off into a tailspin. You could sit there with her at the kitchen table while she replayed a single event over and over again in her mind, each time building up more and more anger about the situation.

Others around her, including myself would try to console her, and if it did 'work' it could take hours. Even then, it was only a band-aid until the next situation would set that anger off again.

I remember telling my mom, how much energy it used to hold onto that anger all the time, how much time was being wasted playing it over and over again. It was bad enough to feel hurt / angry the one time, but to live it over and over again in your mind for days, weeks, months.

Mom would respond with "I know", but also that she couldn't 'do anything about it' it's just the way it was, just the way she felt.

One of the wisdoms we gain as we get older. Sometimes in life we are 'gifted' with the ability to hear our own mother's (or fathers) words come out of our mouth later in life. And until that very moment we never truly realize what it was like, we never could really understand.

It's true, reliving an event over and over is not healthy, or helpful, but when something really hurts you, digs down into your very soul, your mind races to try and rationalize it, to try and make yourself feel better, it does this by replaying the event, trying to figure out what 'went wrong', 'how it went wrong', trying to convince you that life is okay, that you are okay, but their is this conflict, this possibility that maybe I am wrong, maybe I am the 'bad person' maybe I really am the trouble maker, that others think I am

And the pain of it all can be so much to try and bear, and you feel trapped in a deep spiral loop falling deeper and deeper loosing your faith and hope in a better tomorrow.

And all of a sudden I hear the same words pour out of my own mouth, "I know" but "it's jut the way it is".

It must have been how my mom felt those many years ago sitting in her anger and my younger self full of self-righteousness and naivety to think it was her choice to spend so much time sitting in that anger. How hypocritical now that I should sit in my own despair and utter those same words today.

I'm sorry mom. I understand.