Choice.
The beautiful thing about “choice” is that you always have the power to decide how you are going to respond, react, and think.
A few years ago, I had a colleague and friend named, Mike, tell me a story of when he went to visit his good friend, Roger and his family for the first time in New Jersey. Mike was a mentor and close friend at the time but something about Roger always rubbed me the wrong way. Have you ever had that? When you can’t completely identify why you should avoid someone but you just do because you listen to your gut? Well, that was me, with Roger.
After Mike returned from visiting Roger and his family, he shared an observation he had with me. He said, “when I was at dinner with Roger and his family, all they did the entire meal was have negative discussions about others that weren’t present at the dinner table to include, friends, family members, colleagues, and neighbors.” Mike then looked up at me and said, “no one stopped it, and everyone just kept joining in on the negative discussion.”
Right then and there, I realized why I never liked Roger. Roger was always negative.
Mike and I discussed it a bit more and we concluded that from that point on, we were going to avoid negative conversations, topics, and people. We made a choice that our lives would be richer and happier without interacting with those that are negative.
I share that short story because I believe negative conversations take place all the time without us ever realizing it. It is almost as if we need to consciously identify when it is happening and removing ourselves from it.
We always have a choice. Even when we’re trapped in a meeting or being polite at a first-time dinner with another couple or friends. We have a choice not to participate in the negativity. I personally just sit there quietly without participating in the negative exchange until I find an opportunity to interject or change the subject towards something positive or neutral, yet interesting.
What do I find to be the end result? I’m overall a happier person. Sure, things suck and bad things happen. That’s life but I always have a choice to focus on the positive things but an old simple piece of wisdom that still stands true today is that, “someone always has it worse than you.”
I’ll finish this the same way I started it…with one word: Choice.
Authored By: Jacob Werksman, CEO
