"That idiot just cut me off."

Sound familiar?

Here’s another one: “I can’t believe they didn’t attend!”

You know, the friend you invited to your celebration who never responded and you concluded that they must be angry with you.

Oh, and the invoice you send to the customer who, after you having sent multiple auto reminders, still doesn’t pay the bill. Deadbeat.

However, what if that idiot was actually trying to get a choking child to the hospital? What if that rude friend was having internet issues and never received your invitation?  And what if there was a changing of the guards at your deadbeat customer’s head office and you missing seeing the autoresponder guiding you to a subsequent mail address?

It’s natural to fill in the blank with the most emotionally available story. Road rage: they're reckless. Silence from a friend: they're angry. No payment: they're deadbeats. The programming runs the narrative before you've asked a single question.

What if the story you told yourself wasn’t the story at all?

Aha! ~ You're not reading the room. You're writing the room.

Authoring is your programming running the show.  Reading it requires a level of curiosity asking, “Is there something here I am missing?”  Not judgment, not assumption, just one honest question that can change everything.

Don Miguel Ruiz's book, The Four Agreements, nails it with The Second Agreement, "Don't take anything personally,"

But we do … until we don’t.

Questions are magical … and liberating!  The right question can release shame, doubt, fear, anxiety and even bridge more meaningful relationships because we learn more from our blunders than we do from our successes.

The real story is always worth seeking.

This Aha! was an easy one to write because I’ve owned all these stories and more.  The Four Agreements shifted that years ago for me.  I’ll share more about how I stop myself now and look so forward to hearing your stories, too!  Email [email protected] for the zoom link to join the conversation Tuesday at 2:00 pm eastern.