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.
Latest shutdown means most papers where I worked are gone
Death of classmate from past feels like a reminder to change my life
Overthrow of Gaddafi no justification for attacks on other countries
Learning to be an emotional man helped me to overcome numb past
Narcissists use ‘flying monkeys’ to keep victimizing their victims
Letting go of dead dreams can lead to path you need to follow
We love romantic tales of salvation, but genuine change rarely happens
Existing biases dictate how you see grand jury decision in Ferguson, Mo.
Plans change and people hurt us, but we often need to start over