Owning your relational environment

Chapter 68

Stop blaming others for the relational environment you create. Rockwell 

This one bites pretty hard, because absolutely everyone of us is guilty of this at some level. I mean your every reaction and decision and body posture and look on your face, creates a relational environment. Notice that I said creates. You have to own this, at least some of this. People like me have to own a great deal of this. Unfortunately, I think I have to own about 85% of this. In other words, I create about 85% of the relational environment I find myself in. My responses are so poor, and so reactive, and I’m so focused on what I want to happen in my schedule, that I blow many of the opportunities that I have to contribute positively to my relational environment.

So I am trying to slow down. I think if I slow down. And if I think before I speak, think before I react, think before I shoot off my mouth, it seems to me that I will have a much shorter chain reaction that makes my relational environment suck sometimes. Because my reaction, creates a response in the other person, And their reaction to my reaction, creates in effect, my relational environment that I experience every day. If it sucks, then change it!

Much easier said than done. I’ve been trying to do this for 35 years, and I am only fractionally better at it now than I was 35 years ago. That may be the saddest part of this tale in every way. Own your responsibility to the relationship environment you find yourself in.