Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 385 of the wildly successful lifestyle podcast.
Have you ever been in a situation and you feel like there’s something going on that you’re not aware of and then you realize what it is and you say “oh ok, I got it. that’s what’s going on”. Clarity feels so good doesn’t it?
We are so often in our own heads about so many things that we get ourselves all tangled up but clarity is never that far away if we really are looking for it. In fact if we keep an open mind clarity is always there, we just have to be open to the idea that everything we need is already right there inside us.
The great thing about life is we have the joy of living in this world with other people. It would be lonely without other people wouldn’t it? So with the joy of other people comes our intimate relationships, casual relationships, interactions with strangers at the grocery store or restaurants or coworkers, maybe just a passing smile to a stranger. Interactions that can cause us to have conversations in our head about ourselves or about the people we interact with. But it also causes us to sometimes, meaning a lot of times try to read other people’s minds and try to decide what they are thinking too.
I was recently driving by our neighbors house, they are a very nice muslim family that live around the corner from us. I’ve talked to them a few times when I’m walking. We’ve had pleasant conversations, they’re so nice. So one day I’m driving by and I see the man that I have talked to before who was very friendly and I waved and smiled and he didn’t smile or wave back so I thought hmmm that was weird. But it didn’t stop there no my mind went in a million different directions with it. All the reasons why he wouldn’t smile and wave back. The mind can be very creative and in situations like that, not real nice. So I go on about my way not giving it much thought beyond those few minutes of creating terrible things about his reasons in my head. Now, life is always working for us, not to us. I’ll give you a strong example for me.
So a couple days later after my interaction with the Muslim neighbor, I’m up early walking Kenzie around our little cove and our other neighbor is leaving in his car. Now I’m a million miles away in my head, I had a lot to do and was thinking about it all and also keeping Kenzie from being in the street. So my neighbor drives by and he smiles and waves, and it doesn’t register with me, It didn’t register until he had passed that he had just smiled and waved at me and I totally ignored him, it just completely never registered because I was so in my head until after he had already driven by! I literally was waving at him as he pulled out of the cove and I pray he saw me. But then I just started laughing. Because I was like oh my goodness. A few days ago I was thinking bad thoughts about a neighbor that just did that same thing to me and here I did it!!! So now in my mind I owe two neighbors an apology. But if I’m being honest I’m glad it happened. The amount of clarity it gave me was so huge. It showed me there could be a hundred explanations for why someone doesn’t smile and wave back. But our mind isn’t gonna go to the nice explanations without our training it to. And here’s the good thing. I didn’t have to go have a conversation with either neighbor to get clarity. I gave it to myself because I’m always looking for it.
I’m not gonna ever know why my Muslim friend didn’t wave back but it doesn’t matter, all I need to do is take care of my head about it. Get clarity in my head, which was handed to me on a silver platter a few days later.
That clarity was always there, the possibility that it wasn’t personal and he never saw me at all was always there, I was just looking elsewhere. I was allowing my brain to go negative instead of guiding it to what all of the alternatives could have been for why he didn’t wave and smile back at me. But as life often does….. it drew it out and colored it in just for me. It gave me a lot of clarity though.
The clarity that every interaction I have, starts and finishes with me. How I am feeling going into the interaction, the actual interaction and then the thoughts I have about the interaction, once it’s finished.
There are so many reasons people react the way they do when they are interacting with you and 99.9% of the time it has nothing to do with you, it’s usually all about where they are in their head, what’s going on with them. But your side of the interaction all has to do with you.
I saw a video a couple boys posted of an interaction they had with a girl. They were driving and they were trying to get her attention by waving to her, and at the same time they were coming up to a red light when she jumps out of her car and starts yelling at them to stop trying to hit on her because it offended her when they calmly said we were just trying to get your attention because you’re dragging the gas line hose from when you got gas. She looks at her car and sure enough she has driven off and the gas pump handle and hose were still in her car and she had been dragging it, she ripped it clean off the gas pump. She was obviously embarrassed and just ran and got back in her car.
Every interaction we have starts and ends with you.
What frame of mind are you in? Where’s your head at before and after the interaction? What thoughts are you creating about the interaction.
My challenge to you today is to remember just that. Every interaction starts and ends with you. Train your mind to look for alternative meanings, you know one’s that aren’t going to have you creating conflict in your head. It’s harder than you think but the clarity that that option is always possible is very freeing. What’s wrong is always available but what’s right is too. Share this with 3 people who have to interact with other people. I love you guys. I’ll talk to you in a few days.
