Why is it that inanimate objects can control how we think, feel, and react sometimes? I am talking about the kind of reaction that one has when they turn their head, see something unexpected, yet familiar, and they get a strong internal response just to seeing that image.
Now, I am not talking about anything gruesome or unpleasant here. I am just talking about simple everyday things that trigger responses within us that cause us to either get a big smile on our face, or get that unhappy punch-in-the-gut feeling. I am talking about emotional reactions that impact our mindset, behaviors, and results.
I say this because I had one of these moments last week. It was when my eyes fell upon a gray wife beater when I was folding my laundry.
Definition of a Wife Beater
“Form fitting white (black or gray) ribbed tank top worn by men; looks good on well-built fellas, pathetic on skinny fellas, and disgusting on fat beer bellied fellas…”
You see, as a middle-aged man who didn’t maintain a workout schedule for a couple of decades while raising five kids, the idea of wearing a tight fitting muscle shirt didn’t enter my mind too many times. But after working out for a year with a wonderful personal trainer named Moncef, I was back in the game and able to wear those slim tees. The wife-beater t-shirt was my good friend!
Well, after starting my business over two years ago, I wasn’t visiting the gym as I should have. So, you can guess what it felt like when I put on that slim fitting wife beater t-shirt when I was looking again like “office-boy,” not gym-guy. I was horrified at how my good friend turned on me. I hated my wife-beaters and put them away in a rarely used dresser drawer. They were out-of-sight and out-of-mind. I sent them to prison for bad behavior.
I learned to turn my embarrassing, bad, disappointing feelings of self into hatred of an object. I hated those shirts! Damn them!
Well, as I started going back to the gym again, I was able to get fit enough to fit back into my slim clothes after some hard work. I actually sought out my old gray friends and began to visit with them again in their lonely drawer. I granted them a reprieve from their punishment and began to wear them again. I felt like I had my old confident friends back!
Well, after going through an on-again-off-again love affair with some clothing articles, I had forgotten that I was building a history of feelings toward objects in my possession. Presently, I love them. They fit just fine. But before, I couldn’t even look at them. So when I turned my head and spotted a gray slim t-shirt on my bed ready to be folded and put away, I actually flashed back to the hatred I had felt previously and moved to dash it away in its prison before anyone could see it. I reacted like chubby-hubby on the inside when I wasn’t that guy on the outside.
“What?” I thought. “What just happened to me? How could a t-shirt make me go through mental/emotional gyrations while folding laundry?”
I could not believe that I could have a strong emotional response to looking at a piece of laundry. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized that people walk around with feelings (both positive and negative) and appropriate those feelings onto things, other people, and their circumstances. I was guilty of psychological projection.I did just that with a t-shirt; I reacted emotionally toward an inanimate object. (And I did it incorrectly, at that: the shirt fits just fine.)
With this, my head began to spin at how many leaders probably walk around with deeply personal issues affecting them and their reactions and they do not even notice that this is happening within them. They build a series of responses and justify them in their heads to satisfy a variety of feelings and conditions (both good and bad ones.) Until the t-shirt incident, I hadn’t personally experienced this type of situation. I knew that it goes on, but I thought that people should have control over this sort of thing.
But what I realize now is the importance for everyone to have realistic and undeniable conversations with themselves so that they don’t build up emotional responses that can really come out wrong, awkward, or inappropriately. This can negatively impact a person’s level of influence very quickly.
I mean… I love my wife beater. How could I want to put him away when he did nothing wrong? How wrong of me!
As a leader, how are you speaking to yourself about your self, your reality, and your feelings about them? What are you denying to yourself and holding back? What feelings are you inappropriately putting on others, on objects, or on conditions that are causing problems? How might this be inadvertently hurting your team’s performance?
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Tom Schulte is Executive Director of Linked 2 Leadership &
CEO of Learn&Grow.tv in Atlanta, GA USA.
He can be reached at [email protected]
Image Source: only4atime.blogspot.com, blogcdn.com
