There’s an old parable which goes something like this:
A fisherman is on a river, tootling about in his boat, when he spots another boat heading fast in his direction.
Based on the angle, it
looks like the two boats will collide.
The fisherman starts rowing to get out of the way, but the other boat adjusts. It’s still heading straight towards him.
The fisherman calls out angrily:
“Change course you plonker! You’re going to hit me!”
But it’s no use.
10 seconds later,
the two boats crash.
“What the hell is wrong with you!” the fisherman cries. “How on earth did you manage to hit me when the river is so wide?”
And that’s when it dawns on the fisherman...
There’s nobody in the other boat. It’s empty.
So what to deduce from this short tale?
Well, here’s one
takeaway:
Difficult colleagues are just like the empty boat.
They’re not going after us, even if it looks like they are.
A difficult colleague is simply a pro at misusing their thoughts. Thoughts which are probably slanted yet which look like “the truth”, which means this colleague is believing & living into the thought-reality which they’ve created.
Nothing new here of course.
We all do this all the time.
But it does help shine a light on the fact that the way a colleague acts isn’t personal.
And if you
find it hard to keep your bearings or a level head when you encounter a difficult colleague, if you feel like they’re always coming after you (even when you try to get out of the way!), or if you sometimes get huffy, riled up or start to take things personally and you'd like to do this less, this might help.
If they're particularly bad-tempered or feisty,
your heart might even go out to these colleagues.
They’re probably doing the best they can, given the thinking that looks true to them.
As we all are.
Anyway, I don’t know where else I’m going with this.
But maybe it hints at the influence our thoughts have, wherever we go and whatever we do.
I
can honestly say that the more I see about how thought works and how it shows up, the less caught up I become in my own thinking and the more peaceful life becomes.
That’s why the nature of thought is a cornerstone of my coaching.
If you’d like to find out more about coaching then row, row, row your boat over here:
https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com
That’s all for today.
- Tom