When you interact with someone, you have a choice of two paths…a reactive ME NOT YOU Mindset, or a proactive YOU NOT ME Mindset. The first chooses to respond in a way that reflects how you are treated by the other person. The second chooses to respond in a planned way regardless of how you are treated by the other person. My life changed drastically when I shifted to a YOU NOT ME Mindset, and one of the most important ways I am able to continually live a YOU NOT ME Mindset is that I always remember the two words, “One Thing”.
One of the biggest problems in life is that too many of us try to act as if we have everything under control, and that our lives are perfect. We are often not genuine and authentic in our relationships because we don’t want people to see our flaws. When we don’t take the risk to let others in behind closed doors, there is no way they can know the truth of what is happening in our lives. When conflict occurs, it is most often because we don’t know or understand where each other is coming from. So I always try to remember “One Thing”. There is always at least “One Thing” that is happening in someone’s life that I don’t know about or see that is influencing how they speak or act, and I should not hold that against them. There are many things they could be dealing with, they could be suffering from not ever having been loved well, they could have just been treated horribly by someone else, they could have just been told they are losing their job and worrying about how to make ends meet, or they could have been told they have a terrible disease and their time is running out. Whatever it is, we shouldn’t judge them because tough times can cause stress or anger, and if we are honest, we often do not act as we normally would like to under duress. I believe most people are doing the best they can with what they have to work with in life. More often than not, people are living a ME NOT YOU Mindset and it hasn’t occurred to them that life is better when they take into account how they are affecting others…they are just upset about how they have been treated or how life hasn’t been fair to them and react without thought, they react based on how they feel.
It is a rare gift that a person can be kind and humble in the face of someone treating them in a rude or unjust way. We can’t control our circumstances or other people, but we can control how we react to them. A YOU NOT ME Mindset pre-decides how we will treat others, regardless of how they treat us. We know that we want to make others better. Let’s be honest, it is easy to be kind to those who are kind to us, or to those who can do something for us…even people with a ME NOT YOU Mindset can do that. We have the opportunity to be different and change the world when we are kind to all people, regardless of how they treat us or if they can do anything for us. A YOU NOT ME Mindset looks beyond how someone acts, and treats them with honor and respect anyway.
I love meeting people who understand “One Thing” and live it out every moment! A great example of understanding “One Thing”. Katy and Jackie are two beautiful, smiling faces that greet people when they walk in the door and handle appointments at the front desk of a cancer clinic. They are amazing and know that the people that walk in every few minutes are dealing with a lot, they are scared, and they have a huge weight on their shoulders as well as their heart. Sometimes the patients they are there to help treat them poorly, but Katy and Jackie know that they don’t always mean the words they say or purposefully use a harsh tone when they speak to them. Trials in life can move us to become more aware and thankful, or they can make us less aware and bitter, we have a choice. They have patients who are kind to them and patients who are not, but it doesn’t matter, they love them and smile anyway. They are doing their part to make each person’s day better, and they know they have the potential to alter the way that patient handles the rest of their appointment as well as the rest of their day. There are two more people with beautiful, smiling faces in the same cancer clinic named Rose and Danielle, but they are nurses. They have the same mindset as Katy and Jackie, they work together even though they handle different roles throughout a patient's visit. As a true team working with a shared purpose and mindset, they create an amazing environment for their patients to feel loved, supported, and a little less afraid then when they walked in the door. There are even more beautiful, smiling faces in the office that I didn't mention, but it is a tremendous team effort, and conversely if a mere one person doesn't live the same mindset, it can bring this environment to a screeching halt for that patient.
If everyone on a team or workplace can understand the amazing power and influence they have in their patient’s or customer’s lives, acting in concert together they can create a seismic shift to make everyone around them better! Be like Katy, Jackie, Rose, and Danielle and love people anyway, remembering that there is always at least “One Thing” we don’t know about. You will be significant in someone’s life and have the power to change their world!
Thank you so much for reading, it is an honor to have your time! I hope something in this piece resonated with you and helped shift your mindset. If it did, please share it with friends that could benefit from it and would want to join our movement to change the world around you by focusing on YOU NOT ME.
-Chris
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