It’s Worth Paying Attention To
My sons inspire me and my husband makes me aware. In adult life they are a mechanism by which I gauge “me”. It is still ironic to me that life experience will still throw you “curve balls”. Perhaps it is arrogance, but as time goes on you do have a tendency to think on a conscious level you have seen “it all”. While you may not truly believe this, it plants a seed.
With that in mind, how on Earth can anything really be a surprise? Yet discovery will generally catch us “off-guard”. Just when you think no one is watching you will find someone looking right through you, and they know all of your secrets. We are all complicated; but we are not hard to figure out, we all fit into one category or the other. It is important that you pay attention to who you are dealing with. Just because you are in the presence of someone on a regular basis, does not mean you know them.
Our cleaning business has put us in touch with such an array of people. We make every effort to do the work efficiently and with integrity. We have made quite a few friends as a result of the business. We have also lost some clients, which motivate and have motivated me into writing several different pieces. I wish I could say I find it ironic that something negative would yield such a reaction. However, it really makes perfect sense. The losses make you examine and re-evaluate. Whereas in on-going relationships one tends to be lazy and take things for granted.
As I began taking a look at the clients we no longer have, the first thing I had to do was filter out MY FEELINGS. This is business and on the one hand you try to make your clients happy, but on the other you do have to be cautious and mindful that you do not get too personally involved. I had/have been “blindsided” more than once. I asked myself how?
Well for starters people are all so very different, and clients are people. I begin my sales pitch with, “we want happy clients…” Really what is that? Over the years I have discovered the job I do is one that most people do not want to do, PERIOD. Never mind they are unable to do it as effectively as I do, it is something they do not want to do. It is in their minds an necessary evil; and not only do they not want to do it they do not want to pay for it. Theirs is generally the attitude of, “I want this work done for me by you and if you insist I will pay, but I do not want to pay a lot and I get to be the determining factor in what I think is a lot.” In any environment if this were presented to you what attitude would you take? Hold onto that answer and bear in mind, I feel the exact same way.
Let’s take a look at the compensation. Pay for something you do not want to do. Well what is it worth; in the grand scheme of things you can debase it, to try to make it seem as though it is not worth very much. However the truth be known it is quite valuable, but there I go putting the truth factor into play.
Finally, there is a sense of power and superiority. “I am far to educated, important, well-bred to do this thing” is what we get to deal with now, the individual’s sense of self-worth.
This was, all in all, a trip into the land of self discovery for me. People I viewed as pretentious and self-serving, were the mirror image of me. The amount of the compensation meant I was getting closer to my destination, and that was the place where I no longer had to deal with “these people” I had assigned the label of being fake. Lastly, I really do not want to do this work either. This is an means to an end. The very first chance I am given, I will be out of the cleaning business.
Now I will sum this all up for you. No one is exactly what they say they are or try to represent themselves as. You have to look deeper; and this will require time and effort, two things you may not have the luxury of possessing. Watch people closely few of us are the masters of deception we want to believe we are, we are merely average perpetrators. Listen to what is being said; it is a difficult task to take command of the language of words. How many times have you heard someone proclaim to know ALL about something, or boast they know EVERYONE in a certain place. These are “word-traps” with faulty” trip wires”. It is almost outside the nature of human beings to be completely honest, whether it is fear of being taken advantage of, inability to tell the truth, or lack of desire. Therefore, in your search for characters to observe and even watch out for, a good place to start would be a close examination of you. It will be a valuable journey and well worth paying attention to.
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