How do you handle a situation in which you have: made a fool of yourself, been totally in the wrong, did/said something you totally regret, etc.? Do you try and avoid those people? Do you blame someone or something else? Try and distance yourself as much as possible from the words, actions done too quickly, to the wrong person, or actually have a grain of truth in them?
Hiding from others really doesn’t work. If they happen to be family – good luck on accomplishing that feat! If it’s a good friend – not simple either. A co-worker? In other words – someone you are likely to encounter. Pretending ‘it’ never happened doesn’t work? Oh! Could you actually go to that person and apologize? Seems the simplest approach but ohhh so difficult. The ‘people from the East’ have nothing on any westerner – saving face is universal and applicable to all. And though you may have faced this before, it never is easy or gets easier. Why don’t we learn from our behavior? It’s a matter of choice. We really can and some do grow from these situations. Others… not so much.
The issue really isn’t so much about the why this happened – though you will need to deal with that eventually – it’s the consequences of what happened. You’ve heard that Person A has a quick temper or Person B takes offense quickly. Yes? People’s words and actions do give them a ‘rep’. Why? Forewarned is forearmed? Why repeat the cycle? It has to get wearying.
Change always begins with an honest and unabashed appraisal of self: strengths, weaknesses, wants, desires, gifts, talents, obstacles, stumbling stones, etc. Bottom line is we have to begin with the known about ourselves. Change can’t really be affective nor acknowledged in a vacuum. I suspect all of us are neither as ‘bad’ as we hope we aren’t nor as ‘good’ as we hope we are. But without a foundation about the known of ourselves we lack the proper qualities to make the necessary improvements/changes.
A year from now do you still want to be facing the problems you have? Do you really want to see what you’ve missed? Yesterday is a was but it’s a was we can learn from. Hiding will never accomplish anything. If we don’t learn, we’ll never change… we’ll only repeat. However, also remember to learn from the positive things you do, let them guide where appropriate – it’s called ‘accentuated the positive’. The rest of that song goes… ‘eliminate the negative’. Both are needed to cause change, cause growth and you really can do this. Do you wanna?
This is a simple message that I’ve said countless times (I really do need to listen to myself too.) Simple is sometimes precisely what we need… never ignore the obvious.
