I got a work-related email Thursday that made my stomach churn. It was from a client asking me about an issue I’d managed to avoid to avoid talking with him about. I knew he wouldn’t be happy with a decision I’d made related to his account — and I dreaded the day when I would have to deal with it. That day had come.
For a few minutes, I stewed in my unhappiness. I worried about how I was going to handle it. And then something finally clicked in my brain. I forced myself to ask the question I needed to ask.
“What is it that I need to learn from this?”
It sounds ridiculously naive, but for the last few years, that one question has saved me from a lot of grief. It doesn’t protect me from my own mistakes, but it puts me in the right frame of mind to deal with problems. But this isn’t some technique I learned from a book.
It’s something I learned from the experience of a woman who says she died briefly and visited heaven. It might sound crazy, but it’s been useful for me.
Social media creates shallow ties at expense of deeper connections
When strangers tell us things we want to hear, we want to believe
Stop spreading lies: Truth, fairness and integrity still ought to matter
Food addiction means you’re missing something important that you need
Here’s the jobs growth Obama promised—in federal workers
Will you help me understand where all my readers are from?
Words of appreciation can have power to connect us and heal us
Loving heart, willing spirit can turn burdens of parenting into happiness
Briefly: Comic perfectly captured what I wrote about this weekend