Things Are Not Always What We Think

Maleficent From Sleeping BeautyThe Sleeping Beauty Legacy

Imagine there is a huge party and you’re not invited, the whole of the town is going but nobody invited you! That seems rude doesn’t it?

What if you’ve not gone out of your house for decades? What if nobody thinks you’d come because you’ve not been out for decades? It’s a reasonable assumption to make, however, what seems reasonable to one person is not always seen that way by another person, especially the one on the receiving end of the assumption!

So let’s imagine the person who is left out is really upset at not being invited, they have a variety of responses they could make:

  • Ask someone why they’re not invited
  • Just go anyway & assume their invite got overlooked
  • Stay home & ignore it
  • Take revenge!

In the story of Sleeping Beauty that’s exactly what happened! Everyone was gathering for a christening & Maleficent didn’t get an invite since she’d not been out for 50 years, did not know they had online deliveries in the dark ages!!!

Maleficent decided to go anyway but instead of taking a gift & being gracious, she cursed Sleeping Beauty (Aurora) to a sleep of 100 years.

If I were to imagine that Maleficent were to come to me for coaching, I would use my NLP skills (neuro-linguistic programming) to help her see the various other ways of looking at this situation, this is known as reframing. 

Why? We all have events in our lives where we create our own story of what has happened, maybe you’ve had this exact thing happen where all your friends went to a wedding but you did not get an invite, maybe there’s a good reason for that, it may be an assumption or it may be based on a throwaway comment you made such as ‘weddings are a load of rubbish, people only get divorced’ and so maybe the bridal couple assumed you would not want to come or it could be that you holiday the same week every year which happens to coincide with the wedding date so they assumed you’d be away, however they didn’t know that this year you are maybe not going or you had to go away on a different date.

So can you see how this messy situation can arise & cause problems? This is the same with many situations, not just a wedding or party, maybe your boss didn’t promote you because you had a lot on your plate right now and they thought it would be a bad time or maybe they value you too much to see you go to another department or maybe they think you are better in another position they have it mind. Are you seeing the reframing and what a difference this can make?

Fear is a powerful thing, a fear of hurt or rejection will stop us asking someone outright about what their motivation was for their actions. If you asked your boss why he did not promote you & they replied that they’d heard the boss in that department was awful and that you’d hate it, how would you feel?

Here’s an alternative outcome – what if this event happened & you just festered on the unjustness or the unhappiness it caused you? What if this festered for 10 years? What if it drove your behaviour without you realising it? Here’s some outcomes that I see with clients:

  • Repressed anger which clouds their views & choices
  • Feeling unworthy which leads to disempowering choices
  • Knee Jerk responses such as dropping friendships/change of jobs etc
  • Pretending it didn’t happen

Any choice that involves not processing the event along with the feelings or emotions can lead to a negative change in their thinking & responses such as devaluing themselves & picking poor relationships or friendships as a result. It can also lead to health issues due to the conflict in the subconscious but once I help them to unravel their beliefs I can help them to clear the health issues.

If we took the time to really sit with the things that upset us or hurt us we could actually rationalise them & see there may be another reason why something happened or didn’t happen, then we could decide how best to handle it.

In the future when something happens or someone says something, think about why they did it, 99% of people are not malicious so therefore their intent was good, not bad. Don’t be afraid to ask people to explain why they said or did something that upset you, it doesn’t need to be confrontational, once you know that your boss did not promote you because he’s protecting you from the boss with the wandering hands or who seems to have all his staff go on sick leave for stress you can thank them for not putting you in that horrid position or say to them ‘maybe you should have spoken to me rather than decide on my behalf’. You may have decided you did not want the promotion but that should have been your choice not your bosses, even though they were looking out for you & promoted a man instead so there was less room for the new boss to wreck yet another person’s job/life.

Does that resonate for you? Can you see similar events in your life where this may have happened?

 

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