“The most challenging thing for me was not one particular meeting. It was not the fact that the opponent was attacking me. It was the fact that at some point, I started to react.” Those were the observations of one CEO who spoke to me about his experience at the Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos this year.
At the same meeting, there was a lot of focus on the idea of “mindfulness”. What, then, do spiritual leaders think of the idea of reacting? I asked a Buddhist monk, who was also taking part in the meeting, to share his opinion. “Our consciousness is a mirror that is constantly reflecting itself. At each point in time, you are just projecting things that are within you. If you are full of anger, it will ooze out of you. The same can be said of those around you – if they are full of negative emotions, they will project them on you.”
Taking the positive from the negative
But should you allow others to project their negativity on you by reacting to what they say? There is always a gap between the action of another person and your reaction. You choose how to fill it. You can choose to take it personally and to react (which is unconscious behaviour and reveals your vulnerability) or you can realize that it has nothing to do with you and it is about another person’s pain (conscious behaviour). According to spiritual leaders, in most situations your power lies in showing compassion towards other people and the insecurities that are driving them to behave in that way. Could this type of thinking be adapted to other contexts, on a day-to-day basis?
“You have such a big nose,” said a waitress to my friend’s daughter in a restaurant. The girl laughed and started chatting with the woman in a very tender way. “You have such a beautiful dress,” she said. “The roses are gorgeous.” The waitress thanked her and admitted something: “You know, I was always obsessed about my nose. I always thought it was too big.” The situation completely mesmerized me and the waitress was also taken by surprise. She had channelled her negative feelings onto the girl and had expected her to react in the same way. But the young girl did not take it personally. In fact, she even went a step further and showed compassion. By doing so she was able to build a relationship of trust, to the point that the woman felt safe enough to reveal that she was projecting her problems on someone else.
Turn the other cheek
“I do karate,” another CEO told me at Davos. He explained how it taught you to use your opponent’s physical strength to your advantage. But how do you apply that on a mental level? It seems my friend’s six-year-old daughter has the answer.
When we react, attack someone and fight back, all we are doing is revealing the pain we carry within us, our insecurities, our false-self. We would do better to take some advice from the Bible: “Do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”
If you choose to focus on another person and not on your reaction to them, you can preserve a lot of energy. Let’s learn a lesson from that young girl and use that energy for compassion instead.
Author: Tatiana Babakina is Associate Director in the Chemicals Industry team at the World Economic Forum
Image: Two horses for sale play with each other at the Skaryszew horse fair. REUTERS/Peter Andrews