I’d spent ages crafting a really helpful follow-up email for a client that I’d promised them (all part of the service 😉) and something in it got collared by the spam filter.
Curses.
➤ So there was me expecting a response.
➤ And there was them expecting an email that never arrived.
When I don’t hear back from people, it used to feel like a really big deal. I’d think about it a lot.
The mind very naturally, very normally comes up with a list of potential reasons.
📄
The mind, being the mind, usually latches on to the most negative of these.
😞
The mind, doing its thing, then extrapolates from the story it’s created: what it means, what’s going to happen next, how we’ll feel, what that next thing then means, what they’re thinking etc.
😩
And it’s like a snowball, rolling down a hill. The sooner you catch it, the easier it is to stop.
If you wait, or don’t notice you’re doing it, and it gets bigger, watch out, ‘cos that thing's gonna squash you flat!
☠️
These days, if I catch my mind doing that, I just let it fizzle, on its own. There’s no actual information there at all, so it makes no sense to me to give it any attention whatsoever.
I hadn’t heard back and I wasn’t bothered, or disappointed or anything. It was just a thing that had happened. That we discovered together, the next time we spoke.
“Oh yes, there it is!” they said, sifting through the other dreck, “How odd!”
And so we had a beautiful conversation about our understanding of separate realities, and how that unlocks the experience of nurturing more connected, productive, relationships, both at home and at work.
All from an email going to spam!
💌
Giles
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Giles P Croft
It's so simple, and yet such a game-changer.