Dressed in a pair of nude heels and a $.99 dress from Goodwill that remarkably looked super business professional, I sat in the middle of a room of a thousand people, recorder running and pen in hand. I was mentally present, but before the meeting had started at all, I was having my own personal dialogue going back and forth in my head.
Why am I not that far ahead?
When am I going to get to where they are?
What am I doing wrong?
Those were all valid questions, as anyone who has gone through a little minor speed bump in their life can attest to, but they had the wrong wording. Rather, the wrong subject. “I” was plastered all over those questions. I was so focused on what I was doing that I wasn’t looking at what other people around me were doing. What they needed. What I could do for them.
As JFK said, “ask not what your country can do you for, but ask what you can do for your country”.
How often do we step outside of ourselves, our problems, our victories, and look at the world around us?
How often does a thought cross our mind that isn’t about us or complaining about something going on around us?
How often do we think of others?
Here’s what I should have been asking myself:
What do others need that I can help them with?
What can we do to all get to where we want to be?
What areas can we all pay more attention to?
See the difference? There’s no criticism, no selfishness…it is all about we.
We the people have to work together. We have to care for one another, help each other out, and above all, we have to understand just love each other for who we are today, not who we were yesterday. We have to give each other that clean slate and judgment-free zone that we desire from everyone else. If we only treated others how we wanted to be treated, poured into them in ways we want to be poured into, doesn’t physics say eventually that the same will come back to us?
I challenge you today, where it is in business, school, or in the four walls of your own home to step outside yourself. Remove the ego, the pride, and take a look at what’s happening around you. And for once in a long, long while, ask the most important question that actually saves relationships:
What can I do to help you?
