Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 430 of The Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast. Im happy to be here with you. What are we doing together today?? Are we driving? Doing the stair stepper? Maybe we are having coffee, but I promise whatever it is, Im happy about it, thanks for including me…
Ok, Have you ever been invited to a dinner at someone house where everyone is bringing a dish and you aren’t sure what all will be there, but you know for sure that you can eat what you’re bringing? Maybe you’re like me and you have allergies… It doesn’t matter if every other dish has dairy and you don’t eat dairy, that’s ok because you brought your favorite dish that has no dairy. You were out ahead of it.
You knew in advance you would have something you could eat because you brought it.
Now if you go not knowing what’s going to be served and you don’t bring a dish, now you’re at the whim of whatever the host is serving. When things matter you don’t leave them to chance.
When you want to get out ahead of things you have to decide in advance what you’re bringing to the table, if you’re smart you don’t leave it to chance.
Life is like that too. What you bring to the table is crucial. Your energy and your decision in advance of how you’re going to show up matters more than anything else.
When you know you’re going into a situation where there’s lots of varying opinions and ideas. There will be differing opinions but you know in advance how you’re gonna show up regardless of the opinions being served. If you go in guns loaded ready to fire at any moment, well you know how that’s probably going to end. If you’re already having inner dialogue of if they say this Im going to lose my mind…we all do it…but it’s not helping us. And if you suspect there’s going to be different opinions not preparing in advance how you’re gonna show up could leave you struggling. So deciding up front that no matter what you are going to be open and friendly and that’s how you keep your composure in any situation, by deciding up front how you’re gonna show up regardless of what happens.
There’s so many situations where we have to work with other people, whether it’s family, friends, cowowrkers, your boss. And here’s the thing… we tend to attract the energy we put off.
Confident aligned happy people are not thrown off by petty people, you know why? Because they usually don’t even notice the pettiness or the person that’s usually petty isn’t petty with them because that’s not on their radar. That’s not what they are attracting. Like attracts like. If I have turmoil everywhere I go, there’s one person to blame, it’s me. There’s something going on with me…which is not so bad because that means I can control it.
We don’t like to hear that. We don’t want to think we attract negative things, because of course we would never invite negative things into our life… but sometimes we well meaningly plop ourselves right in the middle of a negative situation. If you’re like me, and I think some of you are, you feel like you can lift people out of their negative vibration by tripping over yourself to be nice to them or maybe you think it’s your job for everyone to be happy. This seems benign on its face but that will put you right in an unhappy persons path because you’re looking to fix them so you attract that, and you were only trying to do good..it still applies… The energy that we bring to the table really matters. If we are grumpy we are probably running into other grumpy people all day, if we don’t decide up front how we are gonna show up even if that certain coworker does that annoying thing, if we don’t decide up front how we’re gonna be, them doing that thing will probably ruin our day.
It doesn’t have to be that way. It doesn’t have to be about that Karen at work. Even if you actually have a Karen at work. I love that we have turned the name Karen into a thing..Funny story, long before the name Karen became a thing, I used to work with a woman whose name was actually Karen and she was not the happiest woman in the world I came to realize. She was very unhappy in fact, all the time especially with herself which is always the case, and so of course she brought that to work. And at the time this has been many years ago, it really was my job I thought to make everyone around me happy.
I tried my best to help her be happier but I couldn’t be happy enough to make her happy too. I remember one day she wanted to go to lunch and there was no one to cover the front desk which is where she worked and so I said, hoping to help her be a little happier, I said I will cover it until you get back no problem. I was a sales rep but I had started as the receptionist so I was comfortable doing it. So she went to lunch and I sat up there kind of killing time, once she got back from lunch I give her back her spot and off I go about my day.
A little later in the afternoon she finds me and I thought oh how nice she’s going to thank me for watching the desk while she was gone. No, she was seething…she proceeded to say I saw what you were doing while I was at lunch. I didn’t know what she was talking about, I thought she was joking. But I realized she was serious and so I said what was that? She said solitaire was still up, you simply played solitaire while you were up there. I looked at her and said Ok I yeah…and she just looked at me like I had really been caught. There was an awkward silence at that point because she l guess she just wanted me to know she had caught me, I have no idea what she wanted from that conversation. But she was really upset about it. My playing solitaire bothered her so much that she had to come find me to chastise me about it even after I had done a nice thing for her. But I knew even back then that it wasn’t the solitaire. She was unhappy so much of the time that she looked for reasons to stay that way. No one can change that but her. And misery loves company, No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t be happy enough to make her happy and I couldn’t do nice enough things to make her happy and I tried for a minute but you see even when you try to make someone else happy that isn’t, it puts you in their vibration of unhappiness…so when she got upset about solitaire and came to find me, I was shocked and kind of annoyed because I had done something nice for her and this is what I get? Yeah. Sometimes that’s what you get. I’m not saying don’t do nice things for people, I’m just saying you aren’t going to fix them, they can only fix themselves. In fact if you’re not careful you’re gonna be sucked into their unhappy vibration. Eventually I realized that and Karen fell off my radar. I don’t know what happened to her but I know she didn’t last long there. We were a fast moving upbeat company and the vibration she chose to live in couldn’t last there.
So even sometimes well meaning habits put you in situations with unhappy people because we attract what we’re looking for. If your worthiness depends on helping people..then people who need help are gonna flock to you like flies and you’re going to constantly need to fill that worthiness bucket, it’s a vicious cycle. That’s one ive had to work on.
We are such a connected society. Everything we do is about attraction. If you’re looking for a fight, the person wanting to start one will find you. If it’s your job to make everyone happy the unhappy people will find you.
What you bring to the table is what you’re ultimately going to eat because well that’s what you brought.
Just the same as What you bring to this life is what you’re going to live.
If you don’t wake up and decide up front who you’re gonna be today. Or how you’re going to show up today if you don’t decide what you’re bringing to the table, you’re left with whatever someone else brings.
You’re at the whim of the person next to you. So, yeah Karen’s gonna ruin your day. If your name is Karen I’m sorry…I truly am. You’re not the kind of Karen Im talking about, I know that for sure.
My challenge to you this week is before any new meeting or any upcoming event whether it’s dinner with the family or meetings with a difficult client decide in advance how you’re going to be regardless of how anyone else shows up. Decide in advance how you’re going to be in that sales call, decide how you’re hard you’re going to work at the gym, decide how open you’re going to be to new ideas even if it’s not what you want to hear, and notice too if you’re unknowingly attracting not so great things because your worthiness is tied up in fixing others, people who need fixed will be looking for you. It may explain some things for you. So what am I bringing to the table? Just look at the outcomes in your life and that will give you a pretty big clue…Ultimately the energy we bring to whatever we are doing is the energy we will get back. Share this with 3 people who show up in amazing ways already, unless their name is Karen, in that case maybe skip this one…I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days.
