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The #Nando25 Challenge Idea: Things will happen in life that you won't always understand--this has been happening all your life, if you're older than 10 years. Sometimes the circumstances we are faced with are the thing we have inherited, like our parents, our family our DNA. And somehow we have learned not to accept those things, but to blame those things for the choices we make. And in several cases, we have blinders on when it comes to the circumstances we have put ourselves in and can't see past our selfishness. In essence, we "make people wrong." If my mom hadn't been a single mother, maybe, just maybe I would have had more opportunities in life and this is why I dropped out of school and can't get a job." Or, "My dad left when I was younger so I know that's the reason I can't settle down with anyone because it's in my blood." Or "If my mom would have learned to pick the right man, and not all these losers, I know I wouldn't be with all the cheaters I currently date.
Not only are we not taking responsibility for our own choices, because remember, it's all about choosing or deciding, but we also make people wrong in the process. And why do we make people wrong? Because we don't want to look bad. Today's concept, "making people wrong" goes hand-in-hand with you trying to look good. No one wants to look bad in life. Who rushes into a crowd in Times Square and yell, "Look at me, I'm lazy and I haven't been looking for a job as hard as I should be so I'm unemployed!" No one. But how many people do you know who tweet, Facebook, and blog about "The recession is really kicking my ass, I just can't find a job no matter how hard I look." And if you look at their Facebook timeline--they've checked in on GetGlue for Judge Judy, Everybody Loves Raymond, The King of Queens and The Vampire Diaries every day for the last month--that's almost 4 hours a day X 30 days = 120 hours a month NOT LOOKING FOR A JOB.
It's natural and human to want to look good in front of people--in fact, that's our main motivation. It's why I shower daily, why I get keratin every 3 months at the Davide Torchio Salon, why I iron my clothes when I go to work, why I use all my Oil of Olay products on my face (yes, I said ALL, don't judge)--I don't want to be the only dating + relationship coach who shows up looking like a hot mess. "I have an image to uphold," that's the ultimate "not wanting to look bad" and it's okay--as long as I'm not making anyone WRONG--then I'm in good terms with the Universe. But it's also more than the physical--it's the not wanting to look bad as a functioning human in society--and that's when we starting making the world wrong, our boss wrong, our parents wrong, our neighbors wrong, our dating + relationship coach wrong for our circumstance.
When we fail to take responsibility for our choices + actions, we look to blame anything or everything around us and we start to make the people in our lives WRONG. And where does it get us? Lacking more responsibility + running more SCAMS! In fact, when we run a scam, more often than not--the pay off in that SCAM is making people wrong. And that's a major pay off because we unload our part in the situation.
Example 1: Your electric bill is past due and you have already received 2 termination notices and you have a booty call on Saturday at your place. Your last chance is to pay the bill by Friday @ 5pm otherwise, you will be dancing in the dark all weekend long. You wake up late for work on Friday and you rush to work to find that you have been assigned a huge project and will have to work through lunch. You think to yourself, "I have to work through lunch? That's when I was going to pay the bill!" So you start to resent your boss--she ALWAYS comes and goes as she pleases and this is an emergency! But you figure you will cut out early and pay the bill and all will be RIGHT in the world--except you get called into a meeting and before you know it, it's already 4:30pm and you know the consequences of what will happen if you don't leave that minute. You ask your boss if you can leave early as you have completed the report and you're no longer needed for this portion of the meeting, she agrees. So now, you made your boss RIGHT and you have chosen to like her again.
As you run out and get into your car, the traffic is bumper-to-bumper, and you begin to hate the world and the people who drive in it. You finally make it and rush into the electric company only to find out they closed early due to a maintenance problem. You are now officially in "hate the world mode" and "it's not my fault mode" and "why does this only happen to me mode" and "let me go get some candles mode."
This sounds like a scenario that would never really happen--but it did. It happened to one of my clients and she was 100% failing to see her part in it. In the process she went from making her boss wrong, to making the people in the meeting wrong, to making the people driving wrong, and making the electric company wrong. The funny part was that she got to the pharmacy to get candles and she made them wrong too because they didn't have vanilla scented ones. All of that because of not wanting to look bad for a booty call. Why couldn't she go to his place? He lives with his mother.
The Lesson: I want you to notice the chain reaction of things and how your choices have that domino effect in your life. Choose the wrong man and a whole story unfolds. Choose the wrong job and drama is waiting for you. Choose the wrong ______________________ (fill in the blank) and _________________ (fill in the blank) is likely to happen next.When we are afraid to look bad in front of others--we usually tend to make others wrong and throw the responsibility factor out of the equation. It's okay to want to look good--we all do--but don't make others WRONG in order for you to be RIGHT so in the end, you can look GOOD. Instead, flip the script and looks at things through a different vantage point and move from making people wrong + trying to look good into taking responsibility.
The #Nando25 Challenge Homework:
1. Identify + write down in your #Nando25 journal 3 situations where you have been making others wrong.
2. In each one of those situations--what has been your REAL part in it?
3. How can you "flip the script" and look at the situation from another vantage point?
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