The first step

Looking at things from another person’s perspective does not mean you are giving up. It does not mean you are wrong. It does not mean you agree with them. It does not mean that you are going to change your mind.

It merely means that you are open to accept that the other person is living through different circumstances, has a different set of prioritites, has different feelings, fears, and thoughts. It means you are ready to appreciate how variegated human behaviour can be. And it means that you care.

It’s not a loss. It’s the first step towards building empathy.

Managing disengagement

You can’t just let disengagement be. You have to manage it.

It’s easy to manage motivated people, people you like to work with, people who are talented and constantly deliver good work. It’s more challenging to manage those who are disillusioned, who have have little ambition and feel out of place, who end up meeting all requests with silence and a nod.

And you can’t just let them be. Because disengagement spreads and it touches everyone it meets.

It’s likely that disengaged people will end up leaving. It’s your responsibility to manage the transition. To ensure they get the best deal out of it. And to ensure that they don’t leave disengagement behind.

In the shades

It’s not you vs your boss, your colleague, your partner, your friend, your child.

It’s not us vs the bigots, the social media, the conservatives, the progressives.

We suffer as they suffer. You feel as they feel. I act as you act.

Life is not a dichotomy and you are very rarely required to take sides.

It’s in the shades that we meet and thrive.

On the periphery

What if you are not it?

What if you are not the best choice for that role you so much want?

What if you are not the outstanding writer you have worked so hard to become?

What if you are not the father of the year?

What if you are not the person that will lead the company out of the crisis?

What if you are not the one who has a solution for every problem?

We rarely plan for failure, but at some point, we ought to consider the possibility that we are simply not it. Perhaps, we are not the main character, after all. What happens when we realize that?

There are still a lot of things we can be. We can be the guide, the supporting role, the cameo, or the director. We can still play a part and also decide that, after all, it is not the movie we want to be part of.

A narrow approach will limit our peripheral view.

And there’s so much more out there that’s waiting to be appreciated.

What is keeping you?

That thing that’s keeping you from delivering on your promise – to yourself or to someone else. Is that an excuse or a reason?

People – ourselves included – have little tolerance for excuses. If we keep repeating them over and over again, they do not become more acceptable. They simply make the relationship more difficult.

Understand the difference and take a stand.

Fun fact: we tend to hide excuses, burying them inside long monologues or beyond a volatile interpretation of data. Reasons, on the other end, emerge whenever we need to strengthen a connection.