A good friend makes dinner plans with you. You are looking forward to it with much excitement as an opportunity to feel more connected and caught up. You are a bit early (unusual but true) and waiting for her, sipping your glass of wine and catching up on your mobile device. A text comes in from her. “Can’t make it tonight”
What are your immediate thoughts? Take a moment to write them down.
Did you default to catabolic energy filled with judgment and blame?
These thoughts sound like this:
“I knew this would happen! She is so disorganized. I guess I am just not as important to her as she is to me. What would have been so hard for her to tell me why she can’t make it? I am never having dinner with her again!”
Perhaps you are one of a few people who had more positive thoughts or anabolic energy.
These thoughts sounds like this:
“I hope all is well with her. I’ll check in with her tomorrow. I bet something urgent came up and she just can’t talk about it right now. She is such a precious person; I wonder how I can support her? I think I will enjoy a meal and then go get a bit of pampering at the blow dry bar at the mall. Feeling like I could use that.”
Bruce Schneider, who founded IPEC my coaching school, coined a phrase “How you do anything, is how you do everything.”
How can you make a small shift towards anabolic thinking? I know you can do it!
