Well its 4:30 am and I'm in the lobby of the Big 8 hotel, St. John's, Newfoundland with my friend killing time before we catch our plane back home tomorrow morning...
Instead of getting a hotel for an extra night we just decided to find a random warm place and stay up all night. Works well because we are both trying to be more conscious of the way we spend our money!
Anyway I just spent what turned out to be 5 deluxe days here on a Political Studies Conference. It was my first time in Newfoundland and I absolutely loved it. Everything about it, from the cod tounges to the grand narrows just a fabulous city all around.
All I knew about politics before I got here was that in general politicians were highly opinionated, liked to argue, have confrontations and have a tendency to make promises they cannot keep.... I don't know how true that actually is because I don't follow politics close enough...
However, being in this environment at a political conference got me thinking about some of these qualities and how they relate to my personality. I thought about how I handle confrontation and honesty in my own life.
In particular what happens when you have a situation involving somebody else that you are unhappy with or where you have to share with them news that you know will be disappointing to them or anything else they might not like or react negatively to?
How do you currently handle a situation like this in your life?
Are you one to confront the situation immediately and lay it all on the table?
Do avoid the situation and let it grow?
When you do confront somebody are you completely honest about the situation revealing all the necessary facts?
Do you only reveal a partial amount of the information ?
This is an area I have sometimes struggled with in my own life. I find everybody can share great news, its always easy to talk about the good things or communicate with somebody when the going is good. But things change when the going isn't so good... When you owe your landlord $250 and won't have it before the first of the month... or maybe you borrowed a video game from your friend and lost it.
Whatever the scenario What I have realized is that when you have a potentially confrontational situation you have it for a reason. Although sometimes we think that situations will magically resolve themselves and disappear with time the reality is they won't. Naturally then, the longer you avoid dealing with a confrontational situation the bigger the problem is going to get. Almost to the point where you create a monster.
Now, the bad news is that the longer you wait to confront the monster the bigger its going to get and the harder it is going to be to deal with.We have all had these situations. Think back to the last one you had. Can you remember when it started? Could you almost feel it starting to grow inside you? What did you do about it?
The good news is that there is an effective way of dealing with these situations:
CONFRONT the issues head on as SOON as you see it starting to develop and use HONESTY.
Don't give the monster any time to grow and don't leave anything out.
What happens when you confront but are not completely honest is that you will give the monster a chance to return.
People everywhere appreciate honesty and knowing about situations ahead of time no matter how bad it may seem rather than dealing with a monster.
well its 5:00 in the morning and im completely exhausted talking about monsters I feel like I was just in a nightmare!!.
its really not that bad try this stuff out
Time to get to the airport.
'
MEL
