Yeah But................Gotcha

Yeah but..........Gotcha

How often am I guilty of listening with this on the tip of my tongue? Not so patiently waiting for the other person to pause in what they are saying so I can correct their thoughts with my wisdom. Rather than listening for understanding of what they are saying and why they think or feel the way they do. Can I say that I am being humble or pride filled in that moment?

What I would like to do in my own life is put my Yeah but attitude and self importance in a locked drawer and throw away the key. Each of us have our convictions and we have arrived at them through a lifetime of experiences and interactions. Some opinions are worth changing, some are worth abandoning all together. But the reality is that none of us will be changed by someone else’s yeah but.  What can impact our thoughts is when someone actually hears us and meets us where we are and shares where they are and how they got there. This is a world of not only yeah but along with gotcha. It seems too easy to interact to catch someone being wrong. At least wrong in my way of thinking. How lonely to push people away to win. It makes me sad that I am guilty of this. That is hard to admit. But you know what they say? I am a work in progress and being aware and then being intentional about shifting from needing to prove my point to needing to understand others.

There is always growth to be made and that will be the truth as long as I live. The sign for goal in sign language is one arm outstretched with your pointer finger in the air and the other hand by your side pointer finger in the air. You move your one finger toward the outstretched one. I am never at my goal it seems partly because as soon as I get there I move the goal but also because I am not where I started. That gives me hope. Evolving into a better me is how I want to spend my life. Even at 64 I am becoming who I am but not who I was at 63.

In Him,
Joyful
6-19-20