Have you ever been so tired that you couldn’t sleep? I had that experience recently after returning from a Dubai-Bangkok round trip within 36 hours, one of those occasions where you are traveling for longer than you’re with the client. Despite being shattered, I couldn’t sleep on the return flight so by the time my taxi was entering the lobby of my condominium at 2 a.m., I wasn’t at my lucid best.
I’ve been living at my current address for approximately 18 months and every time I enter the lobby by taxi, the guard stops the car and asks my apartment number. I have always found this slightly annoying as I wonder what the point is since I could say any number. He doesn’t know where I live. However, I have just gone along with it and told the guard my apartment number without comment. That was until a few nights ago..
Tired and highly irritable, when the guard asked my apartment number, I finally voiced what I’d been thinking for 18 months.
“Why do you keep asking that? I could say any apartment number I want; you have no idea whether I’m telling you the truth!” I snapped at the guard.
Calmly and without taking my bait, the guard bent down towards my window and said: “We are doing it for you Sir, if you leave something in the taxi we’ll be able to return it”.
Well, that taught me. Actually, it reaffirmed what I already know, what I teach, and what I had just failed to practise. The tiredness is a good excuse, however in reality it’s no excuse as I’d had 18 months to respectfully ask the guard why he required the apartment number. There are many lessons I can take from this small episode. I shall focus on three for the purpose of today’s blog.
The first is to be aware of our assumptions and even better, challenge them. My assumption was that asking the apartment number was some useless bureaucratic practise. By asking the reason calmly, I would have dispelled my inaccurate assumption and treated the guard with the respect he deserved.
The second lesson is to control your tonality. The same words have a totally different intent depending on how they are delivered. There was nothing wrong with what I said per se, the problem was how I said it. I teach this concept practically every week to my students, yet here I was not practicing it – which brings me to the third lesson;
Lesson #3; no matter how experienced you may be, be your own best critic. Take time occasionally to stop and review your performance – not only when things go poorly but when you succeed. When things don’t go as you would have liked, ask yourself what you could have done differently that would have improved the outcome. Clearly in my situation with the lobby guard, my retrospective analysis would teach me, not for the first time, to challenge my assumptions and be more respectful to others.
When you succeed, stop to consider what it was that you did which helped you succeed. By identifying the positives in your behaviour, you develop more synaptic connections in your brain around that specific behaviour, thereby increasing the likelihood you will repeat these actions and making you better at doing them.
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Great article Neil. Something that is so obvious- but a lesson I have come to re-learn many times over the years (and never fail to fall over kicking myself each time I put my foot in my mouth as you described!)... :-)