What do you do when you don’t respect a co-worker (or even a customer for that matter).

We just don’t like the way they behave and really wish they would be different.

We really have a hard time working with them (or serving them if they’re a customer)

and we hate the way this whole situation makes us feel inside.

Well, there’s our starting point.

Inside.

Inside you and inside of me.

We can’t make them change to make us feel better. They’ve got their reasons for the way they’re acting and those reasons are perfectly fine to them.

We will lose when we engage in the “try to change them game”.

The game we can win is the “I can change things in me.”

What we’re really after is just to feel good about our work, our work day and the fruits of our labor.

And what’s happening is we think this person who we don’t respect is messing all this up for us.

Knowing that we can’t change them we can try something like this to feel better:

“I accept them for who they are (I don’t have to like or condone) and I accept their reasons are valid for them.”

“I will focus on who I want to be.”

We live in a very diverse world.

We’re not going to respect everybody but we do need to work together.

What will make our inner emotions feel better more than anything else is the self-respect we gain from knowing that we’ve always looked for the solution not the division and gave it our best effort.

I support you all in this.