Thought of the day:

I watched a short film today on LinkedIn. It is called The Interviewer, and made by Bus Stop Films. I have linked to it on Youtube. I thought I would share a few thoughts I had after watching it.

The post was titled, 'Don't judge people on their appearance'. That was indeed one message from the film, but I think there were more messages.

One could be to show people respect regardless of their appearance or whatever else. There is an incident in the film where I felt there was little respect shown; to be fair, it was necessary to continue the story.

Another message was that you should judge people on their actions and not their appearance. Thinking that through, it may be better to say that we should judge people on their intentions. It is too easy to judge and criticise people publicly for a particular deed or opinion, and later find out that you misunderstood their intention.

It is, however, not always possible to know someone's intention, so the message is probably best said as 'Don't rush to judge others without looking at their actions AND intentions'. This is admittedly not as snappy as the original title. Perhaps we can just keep this in mind for ourselves, 'don't judge someone until you know more about them through their actions and intentions'.

This is my learning point from the film; I think I can be too quick to judge people on their actions, but later on find out they had good reason to do what they did.

Watch the film and see what YOU think!

Link

Perspective

Relativeringsvermogen – this is one of my favourite Dutch words. I’m not sure why, but it seems to mean much more than the usual English translation: sense of perspective.

Anyway, let’s think about sense of perspective.

Do you ever lose your sense of perspective? Do you get mad when things hinder you that you can’t control, such as a traffic jam or your computer crashing? If you are getting stressed about everyday life situations, you may have lost your sense of perspective. Here are some things you can try to get it back!

1. Ask yourself what are the costs to you and other people around you when you overreact to small things. Do you feel the effects for the rest of the day? Do you make people want to avoid you? Try and take a moment to think about this before giving yourself over to the frustration and anxiety.

2. Next time you feel angry about something, try standing back and looking at what happened and how it makes you feel. Are you anxious because the effects of the incident will cause other incidents down the line, such as missing an important meeting? Or, are you feeling ignored or belittled i.e. are you taking it personally? In the first case, try and work around it, phone ahead and explain you will be late and try to reschedule an appointment. If it is the second case, try and look objectively at the situation, are you being targeted, most likely not. There is an aphorism known as Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Then again, that might seem a bit negative so you can change the last word to “bad luck”. Whichever you choose, it isn’t personal.

3. Are you making a mountain out of a molehill? How will you feel about this in a week, month, or year? Will you have forgotten about it? This is really getting things into perspective; don’t waste energy on something so trivial that it has no real consequences.

4. Try to make something positive out of the situation. For example, perhaps you can spend the time preparing something for work, making a list of the things you want to get done, or start planning something nice to do at the weekend. Once you are busy thinking about something else, you will feel much less agitated.

I hope this helps you to maintain your sense of perspective when the world seems to be against you. Good luck!