Managing Other People’s “Stuff”
Last night I organized an event for dinner and a movie for some lady friends. Since movie times change, we updated the time to meet 30 mins later. One person decided once I got there to lay into me about this 30-minute time change without even saying hello first.
Ok, so I’m a redhead and normally this flies with me about as well as a lead balloon. I stated that movie times changed on Friday and I have zero control on the movie times. This person continued wanting to let me know the last minute (24 hours in advance time change) wasn’t acceptable. To that, I turned around and left. I wasn’t willing to spend an evening being miserable having to sit at a dinner table with someone who treated me like I was incompetent when I specifically got to the place 90 minutes early. This way, if people missed the time change, I would be there to hang out with them.
An email came last night from the Leader of this specific group saying she hoped to learn from a Life Coach how to handle the aftermath of this situation. I stopped and thought, well, “how does a Life Coach handle this?”.
So here’s what I came up with. I’m strong enough and aware of my boundaries to not allow someone to treat me like that and stand up for myself. I’m self-aware enough to know I would be miserable sitting with someone for the next few hours who believed it was ok to treat me like that. I was mad at the situation on the way home, and that was ok with me. It didn’t consume my night or take away from the 90 minutes I got to walk the mall with a lovely lady I truly enjoy her company. To me, that’s what this Life Coach does when faced with a situation like this.
What does the day after look like as a life coach? I still don’t like how I was treated. I believe it was bigger than me and 30 minutes. For that, I feel empathy for the woman who decided attack was a better option than discussion or willingness to listen to explanation. That is about her, nothing about me. When I look at things that way, it feels less icky. I don’t ever expect her to change who she is as a human nor will I. I 100% expect her to behave any way she damn well pleases, as will I. I don’t expect an apology nor will I put demands that if I don’t get one I will do xyz. This only holds ME hostage and doesn’t allow me to move on with my day, week, month, year, or lifetime.
Looking back at yesterday, maybe this was the best thing to ever happen. I was able to look at myself and say, “damn girl you’ve come a long way”. I’ve done my work on myself to where I’m able to let it go, walk away, and be comfortable with someone else being their own human without judgement, expectation, or need for apology.