A Sho’t Left to What’s Right

By Melanie Harvard The Uncommon Coach tm

Politicians and their cronies on the perpetual take; people losing their shit on social media; people stealing unemployment money; and the being in the queue behind you trying to steal your PIN.

Sometimes it can feel like there are no good people left in the world or not many at any rate.

Watching the questions and nasty situations mount up on legal, workplace and general forums, has definitely not been good for my soul. Not to mention all the ugliness around COVID, BLM, and other socio-political events and issues.

Recently I had a closer brush than normal with what feels like an increasing lack of ethics and humanity out there. A delightful situation where I stupidly rendered services upfront only to have payment delayed and then refused. 

When I really need the bucks, mainly to feed, house and clothe the bottomless pit that is my growing kid. And get my older one through college. Kids are not cheap, and it’s a challenge when you’re doing it alone. I felt the refusal to pay on a personal level, and it added unnecessarily to my stress levels. I have been working hard to make this all happen for ages. So it’s a slap in the face to be told that I won’t be paid for the time I could have easily allocated to another, more deserving client who actually pays their bills.

Eish!

It left me wondering, and asking some deep questions.

Before I left the world of big business, I had many small businesses and sole proprietors on my books. As a director of a viable and growing business, I understood that cash flow should be managed. But more importantly for me, I felt a responsibility towards the people that were getting me there. It was a balance that wasn’t that difficult to maintain. It is possible to be financially successful and also do the right thing. In fact, that ethos tends to bring in more business, and you are then able to provide it because you have looked after your human resources properly. 

The importance of looking after good suppliers, and of looking out for the small guys meant that I always paid these people on time. I never made them wait a day for money I knew they desperately needed to stay afloat. 

This is my personal value set, and I don’t expect everyone to follow it. But for me, if you make a promise, give your word, you then have a responsibility to follow through on that or at the very least apologize and offer alternatives if some emergency interferes.

Ok, enough virtue signaling. I know it sounds like an ego trip, but anyone who knows me might know better. 

Back to the business troll who decided to do me over. It was clear to me that he must have known at the outset that he wasn’t going to pay. Perhaps he felt happy that he was clever enough to get something for free? Who knows?

I suppose if I had had my radar on I would have picked up the problem from the moment this new client got silly about edits, sending the work back again and again with trumped-up issues and new formatting requests which had nothing to do with the original spec. Perhaps he thought I would give up, he would then easily walk away with the completed job at no cost. But I didn’t, despite his increasingly out-of-spec requests. So, then he had to fall back on 30 days, and then use his own clients’ non-payment as his next excuse. Then he went to full-on bully tactics. Threatening me with counter legal action if I dared sue him for the amount he owed.

But at a time when small business, and people in general, everywhere, are struggling to survive – these kinds of actions, while more likely, are also more reprehensible according to my moral compass.

Behind every employee short-changed on TERS payments, every supplier unpaid, every person stolen from or defrauded is a real person, perhaps some small kids, a dog or two – living beings which are suffering harm.

If you want to take this into a spiritual space – by knowingly defrauding or not paying valid debts incurred, you are taking on karmic debt. By intentionally harming someone with your words or deeds, likewise.

In a mental and emotional space, every act of harm you commit to others is also harming you. In terms of motivation alone, if you can’t keep your word to others you are teaching your brain not to trust your word to yourself. A slippery slope indeed.

In an ethical space, it is universally unacceptable to intentionally cause harm to others. So this isn’t even about individual values really.

Now I’m not talking about the millions of people who find themselves in a financial bind right now. Like, you take a loan, and next thing you know your job is redundant or your income limited by COVID restrictions, and without expecting it, you find you can’t repay. That’s a different kettle of fish. It’s not generally intentional, either.

I’m talking about those who intentionally muck others about. Who play with and dodge the truth. Who don’t sense or care that their actions are connected to a greater whole. Who don’t get that their actions which appear to be benefitting them are ultimately the source of their own problems.

So perhaps the ethical guideline is not the financial or other crisis you find yourself in, but how you then choose to behave as a result. Either as a decent human being – with care for others as far as possible, with open, authentic communication and kindness – or as a limited person who only thinks about their feelings, needs and has no care for what harm they do as a result.

We need less of those.

And we need to check in on ourselves and our actions to see where we might be slipping up and being that very thing we dislike in others.

What is clear, though, is that we are all a mix of light and dark, good and bad. We don’t get stuff right all the time. The more we feel stressed, squeezed, pressured, and the more complex life becomes, the more our weak points become exposed. We are all learning and growing, some of us more than others.

The sho’t left to a better world is learning to identify when you are acting out of a base of fear – fear of loss, fear of lack, fear of ego-destruction or looking weak or bad – and when you are acting out of a base of love and kindness – for yourself and others.

Reach out to each other and try to connect with the light, instead of the darkness. 

Remember that for every bit of negativity we see or experience, there is a load of goodness, support, and kindness out there. Even if we can’t see it right now. 

In terms of my experience of this defaulting client, I can’t expect him to suddenly see the light and become a better person. If he does, great. But I don’t get the sense of that, as the justifications and ego trips are clouding his space. 

That is his trip. My trip is a little different. Other than a learning curve around how to handle new clients and accounts more mindfully – to avoid the possibility of a future re-occurrence – his shirtiness has actually benefitted me. Sure I have probably lost the money he owes and that’s not great, but what I have gained was of much greater value.

Because as a result of this bad experience I received the love and support of a community of really good people. Many friends and associates who stepped up and advised and assisted. And that reminded me of two vital things. We are not alone, and that there are still good people out there.

We naturally pay more attention to the bad stuff – it’s called negative bias – our brains are programmed to go on high alert when they perceive any form of danger or threat. So the good stuff can easily get lost in that noise, or slip under the radar.

While the corruption and ugliness out there may seem overwhelming, we need to stay in touch with our hearts, and the good hearts of those we have positive connections with. Because if we let the darkness in too much, we might become the very thing that we detest.

The sho’t left to a more ethical, human world starts with us, and our daily choices.

All rights reserved ? Melanie Harvard – the uncommon coach TM