Have you done the cheesy thing yet?

A while ago I read Deidré Wallace article “Have You Thanked And Made A List Of All The People Who Have Taught You Great Lessons?” on Linkedin (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/have-you-thanked-made-list-all-people-who-taught-great-deidré-wallace?trk=hp-feed-article-title-share great one, thanks!)

I have to admit when I read the headline I immediately thought something like “oh no, not another article around Christmas time about how we should be grateful for all we are and have and thank the people who helped us to be what we are. However, I still read it and clicked it quickly away. The next coming days I kept thinking about the article, clicked it (in my head) several times aside again until I seriously thought about it. What if we all in this crazy “busy” times stand still for a moment? Just stand still and think about the people who have helped you this year.

As Deidré says:

We have all known particular people who have changed our perception of things.  Oh yes; The one person who first comes into my mind is a very good friend of mine, she works in finance and has the most amazing analytical ability. Sometimes I wonder how we even can be such good friends; I am all about emotions, they’re crossing my mind constantly, sometimes (especially when I am handling a problem which usually causes emotions) it′s very challenging for me to think in a methodical, structured way. So when I am facing a difficulty, there is usually a huge story around it, covered with millions of sentiments. So this friend listens to my mostly never ending stories (I hardly can imagine what′s going on in her mind when she does), and then she just asks the right questions. Puts the problem on the table and makes it all seem not so difficult. She helps me to see the issue from another angle. She does it every single time and I am so happy she does, because she safes me from being stuck.

Side note: The other day we laughed about our whatsapp conversations which usually look like this: me writing a 100 lines and she asks a 1 line question which obviously I am answering with another 100 lines

•  We have all known particular people who have taught us great lessons. Oh those…yes, I love those. Not sure all lessons are great though. I′ve been more or less saved this year from any deeply impacting lessons, not entirely safed, but I had huge lessons the previous years, so thanks I didn′t get another big lecture this year. I guess the important thing is to understand why people have taught us a lesson and more importantly why we let them do it. What is our role in it? A re-occurring lesson for me this year has been to stand up more for my own ideas. It happened a couple of times that I wanted to do things differently, but let myself being “overruled” just to find out that things did exactly go wrong as I predicted. This feeling “I knew it” is a very disturbing one. But even more disturbing is the fact that I could have had avoided the outcome. I should have taken the confrontation to get it done my way is one lesson learned. So I will stand up more for my ideas in the coming year.

We have all known particular people who have helped us grow. Sometimes the lessons make us grow. The projects which didn′t go as I wished, the recruitment processes that couldn′t have been more challenging, the motivational training that turned out to be a big demotivation or the people who have disappointed me. At the end it′s all lessons learned. 

Thanks Deidré Wallace for this article, it truly made me sit still for a while (which is hard for me!) and think about the people who are impacting my life. So go ahead and do the cheesy thing!