Recently I chatted briefly with someone I hadn’t seen in about 6 months.
You know the type. You meet them or talk to them after a gap of time. They open their mouth and out comes… negativity.
It may seem as if they can’t help themselves. Though I don’t buy into that whatsoever.
But the pattern is there. Plain to see. Predictable.
When you encounter such people you’ve a choice. And you always have a choice.
The chat with her was short. My choice.
You can also sometimes choose whether or not to meet them.
I’d two networking meetings last week. And I looked forward to them. Through business I’ve become friends with both people. And they both have fundamentally positive and proactive attitudes.
In both meetings we exchanged ideas. And it was bi-directional. And there was genuine interest and goodwill.
We didn’t feel talked at. We felt talked with.
And if any of us felt that the other had a challenge that we could commercially help with, then it would have been perfectly okay for there to be ideas/proposals floated that had cost associated with them.
And that’s exactly how it should be – we’re running businesses after all!
The previous week I’d received an abusive email from a supplier.
Will I use that supplier again? Never. I choose to not use them again.
Will I reply to the email? Never. I choose to ignore it.
I’ll leave you with a quote I came across last week:
“Ships don’t sink because of the water around them; ships sink because of the water that gets in them. Don’t let what’s happening around you get inside you and weigh you down.”
Who do you let in?