There are times when I’m inclined to act impulsively. Jump to conclusions. Get hurt feelings due to the way someone has acted towards me or not responded to me, assuming that they are upset with me. These things have a common thread—jumping to conclusions, which causes me to react in a manner that isn’t in the best interest of the relationship, the situation or myself.
I’m an individual who functions at an exceptionally fast pace in all that I do. In addition, when I engage in something, I don’t do so half-heartedly. No way! When I’m in, I’m completely committed to that something or someone.
As such, it’s taken a bit of effort to adjust to the fact that most do not function at my speed or with my exactness. Realizing this was the easy part, learning to implement what it meant was quite another thing.
I had to teach myself to slow things down. That, for example, when someone didn’t get right back to me, it wasn’t necessarily due to him or her being upset with me. More likely, they were busy and would respond as soon as they could, not when I wanted.
A lot of that adjusting involved learning to temper my expectations. This isn’t to imply that I’m better than others. I’m not. Just that I had to learn that expecting folks to function at my level wasn’t being fair to them. Others have a right to exist at their own level of comfort.
I’m getting better at putting this into practice, though there are still times when my knee-jerk reaction is to jump to conclusions or act impulsively. What does all this mean? Simply that I’m a work in progress…just as we all are. That I am willing to honestly acknowledge parts of my character that could use some fine-tuning, and I’m not afraid to dig in and get the job done.
No comments:
Post a Comment