When your high horse towers over everyone else′s...

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Why does it feel so right when others are wrong?

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In your opinion, of course ??

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It also feels good to blame everything and everyone around you when things don’t go your way.

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Not getting a job because the economy is bad or your network just doesn′t bring the juice.

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A supplier not delivering on time because they clearly don′t know what they′re doing … and you′d be happy to show them how it′s done.

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Colleagues making your life difficult because they get overly emotional over things that they just don′t understand.

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Blaming everything external to you feels good because it means you relinquish responsibility for your part in the play.

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It puts space between the situation and your behaviour… so you don′t need to think about you, and spend your time focused on them.

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The reality is that you always have some responsibility in how the situation plays out … by the very nature of the fact that you′re in that situation – even if your only responsibility is your attitude towards it.

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Think of a scenario your found yourself in recently where you felt frustrated towards someone or something.

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Maybe you didn′t understand their behaviour. Perhaps you judged them a little bit (I know I′ve been there more than once recently). Maybe you even shared your thoughts as a secret with someone you trust.

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If you really think about it, were you proud of this reaction (I certainly wasn′t proud of my reaction)? Or if you could turn back time, would you have reacted differently?

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I don′t know about you, but I′m yet to encounter a time machine. So while we can′t go back in time and change anything, we can observe our past behaviour, and decide to act differently next time.

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One way to be less judgemental, not fly off the handle, and keep your cool in moments of frustration, is to put yourself in the shoes of that person, and imagine how you would behave.

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All things being equal, you may have reacted the same.

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Another way to address your behaviour is to consider whether what you notice about that person is in fact a reflection of your feelings about yourself.

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There′s something to be said about the behaviour of people reflecting what′s happening within you. While I don′t believe this to be true 100% of the time, there can be some truth in it sometimes.

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I′ll leave that for you to decide for yourself.

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It may feel like a lot of work to put yourself in the shoes of others all the time (AKA empathy)… and it is!

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Welcome to being an emotionally intelligent being.

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If it were easy, everyone would be doing it and we′d spend less of our time feeling frustrated and more of our time enjoying resolving conflict.

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But the world isn’t set up like this.

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And you may question: Do I always have to be the one to show empathy?

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My answer to that is simple: You set the standards for the behaviour you accept.

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If you want someone to show you empathy – start by showing it to them.

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If you want your team to behave more like a team, change something about your approach to show how team work actually works.

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These are just a few ideas. They don′t work for every situation, and they certainly don′t guarantee that others will follow your lead… but that isn′t the point.

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The point is that you′ll slowly start to react differently and feel differently about yourself.

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And that′s what it comes down to in the end – how you feel.

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Because it may sometimes feel good when others are in the wrong, but it feels much better to not feel frustrated by it at all.