Friday, April 22, 2016

Coaches Corner~Duplicity


What the duplicitous person does not know or understand is that everybody is not like them. We all tend to believe that the way that we are is normal and we can only approach things from that point of view. Being a person to even speak negative of another person in and of itself is not all that rewarding, but when you speak negative of a person when you're not with them and not when you're with them, you characterize yourself as duplicitous. Some of the people reading this blog are not Americans, rather, English is not their first language. So to make it simple for you, duplicitous is another way of saying "two-faced".

Why I am doing a blog about two-face people on a blog that's geared for extraordinary coaches? I'll tell you. Recently, over the last several weeks or months or what have you, I have been met with several people telling me about other people who they consider two-faced. When the conversation begins and they mention the fact that they don't like people who are two-faced, I immediately tell them what my mother told me as a boy. Any dog that will bring a bone will take a bone. This clues the person in, in my estimation, that they shouldn't tell me who the two-faced person is because by doing so they will characterize themselves as some dog who is bringing a bone. 100 percent of the time they have gotten the message and not bothered to tell me who they think is two faced.

Not all of the people I'm associated with share with me that they don't like two faced people, but only some of them and ... I don't know who you are.

Of the individuals who complain about two-faced people, we all seem to have a friend in common and I know who the friend is but I don't really mind who the friend is because I'm going to love them. I love everybody. I am a forgiving person and I seek the higher plane in most of my life's activities. But what about you? How do you handle it when you're faced with a situation where someone is saying bad things about you behind your back and good things about you to your face?

As an extraordinary coach, you must be prepared for such an outcome should it occur and that is what this blog is about today. Here is how it is. Always keep in mind the dog bringing a bone story that I just shared with you. Also, make sure that you don't say anything about people who are two-faced because then you become a two-faced person yourself. Let's examine the motives of why people are duplicitous in the first place.

I had a Facebook post recently talking about the reason that people might not be nice is because of fear. I stand by that because all of us, I think, naturally are nice people. The only time that we are not nice is when we are in fear or when we are afraid to be nice. We might be fearful that being nice to somebody might make us look bad, and that gets into another set of human urges that we have to deal with. The urge concerning looking good and being right plagues us all.

The person that's saying something bad about another person to you, actually likes you. They may even like the other person as well, but they lack the skills of communication that allows them to have a place for both people. They think that by identifying someone else's shortcoming to you that they are elevating you to some degree. It's really not what they think of the other person, it's really not what they're saying to you that I want to talk about, it is what is it doing to you? What effect does it have on you to hear criticism of others? How do you respond when you hear criticism of others?

As an extraordinary coach and someone who may be training business people, you've got to rise above it all and not allow it to impact you. Certainly it might hurt, but embrace certain platitudes like: how you feel about me is none of my business, because it really isn't. You are being baited to not love people.

The biggest enemy of personal growth is self-gratification. The biggest growth of you being all you can be is immediate gratification. And boy, you know our ears perk up when we hear gossip. I'm reminded of a movie that I saw when I had my first experience with the actress, Olympia Dukakis. The name of the movie was "Steel Magnolias". In one scene of the movie, in her New Orleans, Louisiana accent, she says something along the lines of: ‘Tf you don't have something good to say about somebody, come sit by me.’ I find that extremely humorous because most of us are like that. We want to hear the dirt. We want to hear all the bad stuff, but as an extraordinary coach, we've got to be present to the fact that what we think about, we bring about. We have to understand that it is not what goes into our mouth that defiles us but what comes out of our mouth that defiles us. So we cannot criticize people for being two-faced, we cannot criticize people for being duplicitous, otherwise we create the greatest sin of them all, we defile ourselves.

We must be mindful of the fact that walking in love means that you must suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. It means that you cannot allow anything to take you out of your love walk because you are most effective when you are in your love walk and you want to be most effective. I'm not saying that you need to be super-human, although I could be super-human. What I am saying is that any time you consciously make a decision to talk about someone or consciously make a decision to respond to hurt in a negative way, then you are allowing the enemy to get inside your head. Once he gets inside there, he'll take up root and he'll stay there forever.

This blog is about duplicity. Duplicity runs rampant in your network. It runs rampant in your environment. You must not let it touch you. When someone tells you another person has been two faced, then you take the high road and remind them that any dog that brings a bone will take a bone. And you feel not hurt about this, and you must find a way to explain it away. People think I'm such a great guy because I forgive easily. People think I'm such a great guy because I give people excuses and make excuses for their behavior even when it's bad behavior. It's not that I'm such a great guy, it's that I'm a selfish guy and I know the value of my inner life. I know how important it is for me to control my thoughts. I know how important it is to forgive. I know that the life that I live can only be enhanced by the ultimate commandment, which is to walk in love. I'm not that great of a guy. I have inner urges that I have to deal with. I just simply deal with them. When I forgive you for hurting me it's not that I love you, it's that I love me. When I ignore the fact that people say bad things about me to my face ... When I ignore that people say good things to me to my face and bad things about me to my back, oh yes, I deal with it internally. But nobody is under any obligation to treat me good. Mind you, the smart people will, not because they like me but because they like them, just like I treat people good because I like me. Your biggest takeaway from this blog is, don't become a victim of the same malady that produces two-faced people by becoming two-faced yourself. If you find yourself completely adverse to two-faced people or you find yourself reacting negatively to two-faced people, then examine yourself. What I have found is, the people I don't get along with or the people I have a problem with, the main reason I have a problem with them is because they exhibit a negative characteristic much like the one that I have. Only, I'm not present to mine, I am present to theirs.

That's it for today's blog, I certainly hope it has helped you. If it has helped you, please pass it on to someone you know, maybe someone two-faced. If not, well embrace it and read it again and again and again. I end this blog like I enjoy ending all of my blogs, and I say to you to have yourself a good time until the next time.


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