Crazy Cats

I am the only Briton not to have seen Taylor Swift live this year. I have no friendship bracelets or cowboy hats.

Neither am I a fan of cats ever since one pooed all over the living room floor when I was babysitting in a cold, isolated farm house when I was about 16.

[I swear that damn cat chuckled malevolently as it left the room... doubtless to go back to its evil cat villain lair and swivel on a black leather executive chair whilst stroking a pet human and muttering, 'today the living room carpet, tomorrow the world mwah ha ha haha!']

I'm only giving you this background to assure you that this isn't some Taylor-luvie gushing email... or indeed anything remotely political... when I say:

HURRAH TAYLOR FOR AN EPIC TWEET TODAY where she used JD Vance's slur as a badge of honour.

[In case you missed it, she announced her intention to vote for Kamala Harris in November and signed herself off as 'Childless Cat Lady', which is what Republican-Vice-President-hopeful Vance labelled the women leading the Democrats.]

I coach so many folks who have got bent out of shape by someone else's feedback. Feedback can be an incredibly helpful source of information,?but only if we appreciate that:

• Feedback is someone else's?opinion?about their?perception?of us.
• It is not about 'us' it can only ever be about their?perception?of us. It is based on what they think they heard us say or saw us do (and memory is a slippery eel). Laurence Cassoe Halsted (see below) describes it as their 'self-constructed hologram of us'
• Their perception of us is distorted by their views of the world, their beliefs, values, experiences, agendas
• Feedback is interesting information, observation, data.?
• We can choose to act on this data, or to toss it into the bin of irrelevance,or to reflect on what clues it gives us about the person who gave it, or to use it as rocket fuel, or a joke, or a viral tweet.

Now that's certainly worth sitting in an executive black leather chair and swiveling about...

This is an extract from one of my regular ‘Laugh, Learn, Leg up’ emails. If you'd like the full version (which also features daft jokes plus pointers to serious brain food), sign up for my weekly email: https://www.standupandthrive.com/resources