Extend A Little Grace
When someone is unkind to you, especially when it is unprovoked and you did not do anything to warrant the treatment, give them a little grace–you don’t know what they are experiencing at that moment.
Your initial response is usually to be hurt, angry, or return the unkindness back to them. We typically can’t control our initial response, but you can recognize it, take a moment before reacting, and extend the other individual a little. Chances are you are the recipient of their emotions from something else going on in their life–something bigger, stressful, and upsetting. Just think of an instance when you’ve been unkind to someone else–you were experiencing something much deeper and emotional than whatever the other individual did (or probably didn’t do) to deserve how you treated them.
Put your Self in their shoes–there is something bigger going on internally to cause them to be unkind. Our natural state as human beings is not unhappy and to be mean, it’s happiness, joy, and love. So, to get to the point of being unkind to another individual means there is an internal struggle of some sort going on.
My wife, Ang, owns a boutique store for boys' clothing and has built an amazing customer base thanks to her customer service, shopping experience, and collection of clothing she curates. I’d say 98% of her customers are amazing, but the 2% who are rude, act entitled, lie, or even try to steal really get to my wife–and I understand why. Whenever she has an instance of a rude customer, I always remind her that the customer has to be having a bad day—something else is going on in their life.
Over the last couple of weeks, there has been a customer out of state that had an issue with the post office Ang has spent hours researching what happened, helping the customer figure out how to fix the issue (that was not an issue caused by my wife), and going out of her way to try and deliver a great experience despite the inconvenience. Throughout the whole time, the customer was rude, blamed Ang, unappreciative of the extra time that was put in, and just overall unkind and mean. The customer could not tell but I heard about how upsetting this was to Ang and every time she would confide in me I’d remind her that she was doing all she could do to help--more way more than she was obligated to–and that the customer had to have something else going on to cause her to be so difficult. I encouraged her to find peace in that she was doing everything she could and ultimately it was not her responsibility to help this customer find happiness in her life.
Well, yesterday Ang received an email from the customer apologizing for how she had acted during the last couple of weeks. She acknowledged and thanked Ang for going above and beyond to help her out and she confided that she had some things going on in her personal life that were affecting her more than she realized.
It wasn’t the order she was so upset about, it was something bigger.
Because she extended grace to the customer and didn’t return her emails with nasty emails deflecting the blame back to the customer or leaving it to the customer to track down the package, Ang has probably earned another long-term customer. More importantly, she allowed the customer the opportunity to work through whatever was going on in her life without adding more stress to it from Ang.
So, the next time someone impatient honks at you at a red light, is short with you on the phone or in person, or is just unkind to you for what seems to be no reason at all just extend a little grace because the treatment you received is an outlet for something else going on in their life and it’s not a reflection of you.
And remember, the more grace you extend, the more you’ll receive when you need it…and you will need it someday.
See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,
JC
