How nice to be recognized for making a difference in ways that I didn't even know.
Matt's blog entry referenced my #313 as the entry that woke him up. I had to go back and figure out which one that was! (I have re-posted it below for your convenience.) In addition to Matt, I had several others tell me that the wet towel analogy helped them, or they thought it was about them, or it somehow resonated with what they needed to learn.
The ironic thing about that entry was that I wrote it about myself -- I was very upset about something (that I can't even remember now) and I knew if I shared it, others would be sucked into my drama. So I waited a day and then we addressed the topic without fanfare and moved on.
Today's lesson: if you have something good to share about someone, make the time to do it now. A shout out on a blog, a quick email, a personal note or a "hey, thanks" go a long way in refueling someone's spirit and energy. But if your message is laden with emotion and negative karma that will detract from the core of what you're trying to communicate, then waiting until tomorrow will be just fine.
When
someone gets all worked up about something, the temptation is often to
share their emotions with the first person around. Many times this
plays out like someone vomiting in a cartoon -- the words just blather
out and spew all over the listener. The original party may feel better,
but those who were the recipient of the sharing now have the burden of
dealing with the emotions as well.
Like a stain on their shirt, they may choose to ignore it, but it is there nonetheless.* More often than not, they don't/can't/won't forget it is there, so the time and emotional energy invested in the issue multiplies.
It most instances, everyone would be better off if the original speaker allowed for an element of time to pass before sharing. Time has the ability to decompress emotion and put things into a much more reasoned perspective. Think of emotion as water being soaked up by a towel. Time is equivalent to ringing out the water, so that the towel may be easily passed on to another without fanfare or incident. If you hand someone a soaking wet towel, all the attention turns to dealing with the water rather than the towel. If you have let the emotion pass through, the actual issue may be addressed.
Next time you're tempted to vent or insert drama into a situation, ask yourself if you really need to hand off the towel while it is soaking wet or whether everyone would be better off if you waited a bit before doing so. I'll bet you know the right answer.
-- beth triplett
*see Blog #230
Matt's blog entry referenced my #313 as the entry that woke him up. I had to go back and figure out which one that was! (I have re-posted it below for your convenience.) In addition to Matt, I had several others tell me that the wet towel analogy helped them, or they thought it was about them, or it somehow resonated with what they needed to learn.
The ironic thing about that entry was that I wrote it about myself -- I was very upset about something (that I can't even remember now) and I knew if I shared it, others would be sucked into my drama. So I waited a day and then we addressed the topic without fanfare and moved on.
Today's lesson: if you have something good to share about someone, make the time to do it now. A shout out on a blog, a quick email, a personal note or a "hey, thanks" go a long way in refueling someone's spirit and energy. But if your message is laden with emotion and negative karma that will detract from the core of what you're trying to communicate, then waiting until tomorrow will be just fine.
-- beth triplett
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Wednesday, April 10, 2013
#313 wet towel
Like a stain on their shirt, they may choose to ignore it, but it is there nonetheless.* More often than not, they don't/can't/won't forget it is there, so the time and emotional energy invested in the issue multiplies.
It most instances, everyone would be better off if the original speaker allowed for an element of time to pass before sharing. Time has the ability to decompress emotion and put things into a much more reasoned perspective. Think of emotion as water being soaked up by a towel. Time is equivalent to ringing out the water, so that the towel may be easily passed on to another without fanfare or incident. If you hand someone a soaking wet towel, all the attention turns to dealing with the water rather than the towel. If you have let the emotion pass through, the actual issue may be addressed.
Next time you're tempted to vent or insert drama into a situation, ask yourself if you really need to hand off the towel while it is soaking wet or whether everyone would be better off if you waited a bit before doing so. I'll bet you know the right answer.
-- beth triplett
*see Blog #230
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