Sum up the Mental Ledger
A few more examples for the road!
I have gone in-depth with the last two pieces and for this one, lets grab some examples and run them through the framework!
Use words purposefully
Words are powerful! I have shown this previously and here are some examples.
The sentence “Great work! You seem to really know what you are talking about.” Pretty good sentence of praise. What if you add qualifiers to the end?
“Great work! You seem to really know what you are talking about, for a kid.”
or worse
“Great work! You seem to really know what you are talking about, for a woman.”
(pssst, if you say these… you need to run far away before you get murdered)
When there is an action and no words, that can also be powerful! Lets say you let someone go on your team and let time pass without addressing anything to the rest of your team. Guess what? Your team is terrified!
When you talk to yourself while you’re doing something you’re not good at it’s likely thoughts such as “I can’t do this” will creep in. It’s been studied that all you have to do is spin it positively with one word to make a negative ledger event become positive. That one word is “Yet”. If you change that to “I can’t do this, yet!” you are giving patience and empathy to yourself!
These also go back to the guidelines!
They are not the same for everyone
You may be blind to micro-aggressions or you may be so confident in your work you didn’t even think you could also be let go. You also don’t know how many negative events your thoughts are creating until your body reacts to your mental ledger. Did you know its possible for stress to cause you to get sick? You know all those knots in your neck, yeah… negative ledger! However, it could take me 10x more to get to the same place as you.
If you are in debt, you don’t know when your tab will be called in
Your mental ledger is in control of your body and actions. If you are in debt it means you are much more likely to be in a negative space. When you are there you will likely see things skewed negative. A person gets right in front of you in line. Does it make you spiral like the entire world is conspiring against you? Does that cause you to do something you regret? This means your debt is running due and you are in trouble. If you can keep things at least partially balanced, you are more likely to let the small stuff go.
Being balanced is still probably a bad position to be in
You want to use positive in that magic relationship ratio of 5:1. We talked about how negative events linger and its important to spin even negative thoughts into positive to build that positive wall. You never know when a big event will chip away at it and the bigger the wall the better!
You have impact over others ledgers
What you say matters and you have no idea the impact. If you constantly use micro-aggressions, you are massively in debt to them. You have no idea when someone will call you out or kick you out of their cycle with no warning. This is like your own personal debt, however, instead of health issues like above, its on someone else’s ledger and can cause relationship failure.
Stewing over something - shower arguments
Have you ever had an argument in your head between you and another person? Maybe you were thinking about you and an acquaintance or friend about a political stance. You were thinking about how you would argue a point and then playing their side as well.
What about a dream. Ever have a dream about someone being mean to you and then you really get mad at them?
Last one… you get your work performance and its “meets expectations”. Initially you think ok cool, I am about where they expected me to. Then you let your mind wander…
Uh oh.
WTF were their expectations? High? Average? Am I excellent and they expected me to be excellent? So then I am better than others and because I am I get the same appraisal?
They are not the same for everyone
I am going to assume everyone has had at least one of these go on in their brain. The difference may be how you hold it in your ledger. Are you willing to admit you were just doing a thought exercise when you owned your political opposite in that mid shower mental throw-down? Or did you actually see them in a more harmful light because of it?
Being able to have those mental exercises and then step away unemotionally and leaving a temporary ledger item is huge. Yeah you did punch me in the face so you could get away from that bear we were running from on Mars. Ya know what… it’s cool, we can still grab lunch tomorrow.
You have impact over others ledgers
I know you can not control what goes on in another persons head, however you can do your best to make things as clear as possible within your control. If you had a date that wasn’t a connection… TELL THEM. It may be awkward or feel uncomfortable for a bit. At least they wont be stewing over it for days or weeks. They can move on!
If you are interviewing people and it doesn’t work out… again… TELL THEM! Don’t lead them on saying you will schedule more interviews and then drop a template rejection email or worse ghost them.
Words matter and it is ok to be honest. Honest doesn’t have to be mean! It is a way to allow their ledgers to be calmer or at least have as little impact from the things you can control.
Want some evidence (because I am just an idiot with a keyboard and internet) to go with what I have been going on and on about for 3 whole blogs?
If you are going to take 1 thing from the mental ledger…
Take a deep breath and say to yourself, “Everything is coming up Milhouse!”
Errr… I mean “Everything is coming up <Insert your name> !”
Maybe “Everything will come up <Insert your name> !”
Idk, you do you!
