Dr. Noelle Nelson - A Note from Dr. Noelle



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***NEW*** Dr. Noelle Nelson’s chapter in the latest “Chicken Soup for the Soul” book called “Life Lessons for Mastering the Law of Attraction: 7 Essential Ingredients for Living a Prosperous Life” (May 2008, Chicken Soup Classroom)

It’s All in Your Point of View

You finally qualified for flex-time, so there you are at home, patiently waiting for your supervisor to email you the resources you’re to use to complete your end of the project. And waiting and waiting. You clean up your desktop, check your email. Nothing. You re-organize your files, check your email. Still nothing. Now you’re not so patient. There’s a deadline on the project, of which you’re well aware. You start to stew. What is with your supervisor anyway? Doesn’t she know you can’t just whip this work out? It takes time! The longer you wait, the more you stew. She has it in for you, you know it. Last week, for example, during the team meeting, when you contributed those ideas you’d stayed up half the night working on, she barely said “uh-huh” before jumping into something totally unrelated. And the week before that, when you asked for additional supplies, she said “You’ve gone through all that already?” as if you purposefully waste materials. You take your increasing irritability and frustration out on another cuticle. Ouch. You check your email. Ah, finally! You read your supervisor’s note and now you’re not stewing, you’re fuming. The deadline’s been advanced by a day! Now you’ll never get this out on time. It’s not fair, it’s just not fair. Grrr . . .

Of course it’s probably not fair, but life isn’t about fair, life is about how we cope with the events and situations that cross our path. As understandable as your frustration and irritability are, they don’t help you cope effectively. You just succeed in damaging another cuticle (or 2 or 3) and raising your stress level to where you’re unlikely to function at your best. And let’s face it, when you’re up against a deadline, you must function at your best. So let’s take a deep breath and rewind.

We are, each and every one of us, the center of our own particular universe. No matter how altruistic and unselfish you are, no matter how much of your life you devote to others, you do so from your own perspective, your own point of view. Even if, Mother Theresa-like, your life is entirely dedicated to helping others, you do so because from your point of view, it is the right thing to do, the necessary thing to do, the thing you feel you must do. You are always operating from your point of view.

So is your supervisor. From her point of view, she’s getting the resources you need to you as quickly as she is able, given whatever is going on for her at the moment. She wasn’t, in her mind, ignoring your efforts at the team meeting, she simply had a more pressing agenda – that other matter she jumped to. Your supervisor must answer to a VP for the materials used by her department, thus her concern when you requested more. The deadline was advanced, not by any maliciousness on her part, but because the PR team requested it. Your supervisor was operating, as we all do, from her point of view.

How does this matter to you? It helps you cope more effectively. When you remember that people operate from their own point of view, you realize that 99% of people’s actions are not in order to bug you, inconvenience you, insult you, or otherwise interfere with the smooth running of your life. People are doing whatever they are doing for the smooth running of their lives. You can recognize that your supervisor has demands placed on her, and that in all likelihood, her responses and actions towards you are largely determined by how she’s coping with those demands. That recognition alone can lift a large percent of stress off you. It also helps you know how to deal with your supervisor.

If you feel your input at the meeting was ignored, don’t take it personally, write your supervisor a memo outlining your ideas, thanking her for taking the time to consider them. If she bridles at your requisition for more materials, be understanding of what her circumstances might be, and present her with documentation that shows how materials were used and why. If a deadline seems unreasonable, discuss with your supervisor if some portion of the project can be turned in at a later date, so you can get out whatever is the most urgently needed right away.

When you appreciate that others are coming from a point of view that is different from yours, answering concerns of their own – just like you have concerns of your own - it’s a lot easier to drop your resentment and cooperate so that the job gets done, and work becomes a lot more fun.

“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.”

Henry Ford