Imagine a man wins the lottery. A few weeks later, the woman of his dreams starts flirting with him and seeks a relationship with him. What a lucky guy, right?
Now, if you’re a relatively normal person, some alarm bells probably started ringing in your head. They’d ring for most people… except the guy who won the lottery.
People, I’ve noticed, are pretty bad about realizing how changes in their circumstances can lead to changes in behavior of those around them. The lottery example is extreme, but most changes are more subtle. People get a promotion at work and don’t understand why now they feel iced out. They chalk it up to something like jealousy, but really it’s just that people treat their boss differently than their peer.
At the beginning of your career, you were easily replaceable and so you often had to be a little extra sycophantic to keep your job. 25 years in, your more of an expert and harder to replace, but you might still act like you’re on thin ice all the time just because you haven’t realized that you’re not. Maybe when you were young, you grew up in an unsafe environment. Now you’re an adult in charge of your own life and you’re perfectly safe, but you still jump at loud noises because some part of your brain still expects bad things.
“Stop and smell the roses” is good advice, and at least part of the reason why is that we should take time to really understand our environment. Write down observations about your circumstances. You’d be surprised how often you’re someplace totally different than your brain has been conditioned to expect.
