Dong something incredibly rare in my office the other day – cleaning it – I was walking by a small rack on the wall and I hooked the belt loop of my jeans on
one of the hooks that stuck out,
My First Inclination
My first inclination was to just keep on walking, giving it a yank and pulling myself free. In a, sometimes infrequent, moment of mindfulness, I realized what I was doing and stopped. I backed up, gave my waste a gentle twist the other way, and the hook immediately let go of my pants.
Then It Struck Me
No, I don’t mean it hit me, but it occurred to me that I might also do that in relationships with others. Someone says something that I am not okay with and I will quickly react critically without thinking.
I have heard this from clients for years. They will say something like, “They kept pushing my buttons and finally I figured I’d taken enough. So I just let them know what was happening.” Sometimes these things ended in violence.
Maybe it’s just me, but what I hear when someone – let’s say it was Joe – blames another for button-pushing is that Joe was powerless, and that the other person was responsible for what Joe were feeling, thus also responsible for what Joe did.
Then Joe = Victim – not a good place to put oneself.
Don’t Bite the Hook
What if, when that sort of thing happens, instead of saying people are ‘pushing our buttons,’ we think of it like they are baiting the hook and throwing it out there for us?
We all realize that when we throw some bait out in front of a fish, they will pounce on it, and when they do, they get hooked. That’s the idea of bait.
And I haven’t ever had a client that wasn’t smarter than a fish.
We never have to take the bait, do we? I believe that is my point. When we don’t take the bait; actually every time we don’t take the bait, we get a little better at recognizing the bait, and better at choosing.
Much better to choose than to be powerless.
