Take a Moment to Walk in Another’s Shoes

I have been guilty myself of making judgements about another person in a moment of annoyance or in anger for something I think they have done. That was the case quite recently when I was surprised by the behaviour of some work colleagues who had cut me off without so much as a word and refused to speak to me.  For weeks I tried to understand what had happened and why they might do such a thing; looking inside myself for what I may have done to bring this upon myself.

It was not until recently that my attention shifted outside of myself to wonder what might have been happening for them to behave in that way and in that moment, I put myself into their shoes. I gave some thought to their lives at that time and came to understand that a particular set of circumstances that they were experiencing would have been very difficult and who could guess how anyone might behave given the same thing happening.  This exercise just let me have a little bit of empathy for those people and I found at that point, that it was easy to move on and accept what had happened.

It is a part of the personal growth experience to accept things as they are and move towards what you want for yourself. I now know that one of the things that I want for myself is to have empathy and concern for others, regardless of how I am affected by their actions.  This was just another opportunity to move closer to who I really want to be.