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Change the World: If You Can’t Say Something Nice

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Forgive the Guy You Don’t Like

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One of the best things about growing up shy is that I became an observer. I watch people and the patterns in our behavior. Yeah, I watch myself too.

Sometimes we do this curious thing. It’s as if we have two dictionaries. One dictionary we use when we talk about people we love and people we think are good. The other we use when we talk about people who scare us, have hurt us, or for some reason we have decided are not good enough.

The first dictionary has the words forgiveness and compassion. The second does not. When we decide we don’t like someone enough, we pick up that second dictionary. We find words like righteous and noble and use them to talk about ourselves and our feelings. Our noble selves decide how other folks think, forgetting entirely that they are people who love their children too.

I think that’s why my mother said, “If you can’t say something nice . . . ”

It seems a small thing, but it’s not. Think of the difference it would make in a life if we lived by that rule.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Start a New Job

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Change My Job with a Thought

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Ever hear someone talk about a brand new job? Whenever I do, it takes be back to those nice first day of school feelings.

Life seems light. The world is fresh. Even the kids that that we knew from last year start to look and act better. Everything is new beginnings — new desk, new paper, new pens, new problems to solve, new ways to solve them, a chance to see what I can do. New jobs are like that.

I bring myself back from the new job fantasy by recalling how long it takes to get familiar in a new place. Every new job takes time to learn the culture, the people, and how to get things done when I need to. That’s a lot to give up once you’ve gotten there.

New beginnings are wonderful and fresh, but being around a while offers the relationships, credibility, and support of a familiar place. I want the values of both without lose the downside of each.

I wanted that enough that I figured out how to make it happen. The trick is to blend the old and the new together.

All it took was a change in the way that I see.

Today, I start a new job, doing the job that I did last week. I let go. I wipe the slate clean. I imagine that I inherited this busy desk from the busy person before me. It’s a good feeling to put that distance between now and Friday.

All of the tasks on this desk held no romance for the person who sat here on Friday. But the new me walks into this job looking at them as filled with promise and so exciting.

Thoughts of someone who isn’t delivering turn from an ongoing headache into the challenge and opportunity that a fresh mind sees. That situation has just become information the person previously in this job shared before leaving. It’s simply a fact on my radar that has no past feelings attached to it. The problem solver in me knows that I’m more than ready to smile into a new approach.

A clean slate is like the first day of school filled with new beginnings– new desk, new paper, new pen, new problems to solve, new ways to solve them, a chance to see what I can do. I take a new look and my old job becomes new like that too.

The people I work with notice that I’ve got a new outlook and soon they have one too.

I’m taking a new job to work with me today. I can feel it already.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss