All About Me

In my roles as corporate consultant, executive coach and college professor, and as a friend to many, I often see people struggling to move out of painful patterns and reach a more satisfying place in their lives. It could be relationship issues, career issues, health issues or the general “blah” of life, but oftentimes there is something that someone wants to change – but they just can’t seem to get out of the rut.

I was driving a different route to a meeting and found myself in a long line of traffic trying to merge onto a busy roadway. The cars were very slowly moving into the lane of traffic, and it was taking a great deal longer than I had anticipated for my drive. I normally go another route to this area of the city, and would have been in the line of cars letting others in, not waiting to get in – if I had gone my normal route.

Last week I was interviewed on a very lively nighttime talk show in a major city. I’ve been asked often lately to comment on the “Occupy” movements in different cities, and I thought that would be the direction of our conversation. Instead, the host had a number of insights and ideas he wanted to share with his listeners, and he was talking about many difficulties that the unemployed and lower-level employed are facing. Next, he took a call from a listener who vehemently disagreed with his line of thinking and his insights.

A recent advertisement for car insurance outlined what I think of as “the Domino Effect.” The person in the car crash needed to borrow a car, which meant the person who loaned it didn’t have their car and had to borrow one from someone else. That person had to cancel an appointment, which meant that the person having the appointment with them was inconvenienced, and so on. In life, our actions affect others’ lives.

I was in a restaurant the other day and a little boy, around 6 years old, was giving his mother a very hard time. She was getting more and more frustrated. He said something to her that she obviously didn’t like, and she responded in a loud voice, “Watch your mouth!” She peppered her statements with a few choice words that I cannot repeat here in my blog, but suffice to say that she probably wasn’t watching her own mouth very well at that point!

One of the interesting things about understanding other people is having the chance to watch what others do – and, often times, observe how disconnected they are from their impact on other people. We all have moments of “It’s all about me” – it is secret number one, after all. But some people truly look at the world through the lens of “me” and have little ability to see how their actions impact others.