We are all taking things far too personal (in business and beyond)

Thursday afternoon and my colleague asks me what I thought about the meeting this morning – which meeting? I had nothing in my diary. Why was I not invited? Thinking about it, Richard who set up the meeting was not too keen about the project I am driving. He for sure left me off the list so I could not get broader buy-in for my project

STOP! While there is no meeting and no Richard, the situation is not uncommon. We see a behavior in others that in not in our interest and more often than not conclude malicious intent: “She does not like me”, “he did this on purpose to hold me back” etc.

The, depending on your point of view comfortble or uncomfortable, truth however is that the world in general does not revolve around us. What we see as an attack against us, is more often than not, just ignorance or carelessness.

There is even a fancy term for this, Hanlon‘s razor: “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity”.

So next time, instead of holding a grudge, why not try a simple antidote and just talk to the person?