Tag Archives: Emotion

Evasive?

I often use indirect or evasive communication to avoid conflict or confrontation. So I want to learn better use direct and straightforward communication to resolve conflicts and deal appropriately with confrontations. That was something presented to me today and it seems to fit me, seems to fit my behavior. But something else I was confronted with was that I often act in ways that invite others to reject, shame, or express anger toward them. So I am looking to act in ways that encourage loving and healthy responses from others.

So just now I was confronted with a situation where I didn’t know what to do, how to behave. As I felt provoked by someone close to me, so finally I decided just to leave, but while reading the above it might have been evasive communication. But ‘confrontation’ in this type of situation with this person mostly just ends in anger, so I didn’t and don’t know what to do, even though I think that I might have done a little bit better than in the past.

And I still don’t know what I am doing or not doing that seem to make other people, well, not sure what to day. Do I make them feel insecure or something? But maybe I am just going too fast, as I just started learning about these things where people like me or with my type of behavior are being helped and supported by doing better.

So yes, let’s just relax and start with step one.

Service and honesty

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I am starting to believe more and more that running a business is indeed about service and honest, and not about money. As whenever I am dissatisfied with anything it is mostly, or maybe even always, about service, or honesty, or maybe not being heard, feeling heard, but the last of course back to service, listening to your customers, serving your customers.

And the reason I am writing this article now is because of the behavior and service of the undertaker my mam has hired for taking care of the funeral of my sister, who died last week. And one would expect especially an undertaker to be very careful in dealing with family, as I can also understand it can be very difficult not to become greedy in situations of death, where there is a lot of grieving and where people would very easily say ‘yes’ to all kinds of things and not really think about the cost too much as their mind is somewhere else.

But wait a minute, that is exactly what my complaint is about, not about cost, but about service. As I live in The Philippines and my sister was buried in The Netherlands. And as I don’t have the budget to go and also just didn’t like to go, I suddenly thought it might be a good idea to attend the funeral through Skype, through internet, with some kind of video conferencing tool. And I didn’t really care about the cost, as I just didn’t want to travel, but I would have liked to attend the funeral online. And I didn’t even care what the cost would be. I even mentioned, or at least thought, that if they would charge € 1,000.00 or so for it, that would be okay. As I wouldn’t have to pay for it anyhow as my sister who passed away has money enough, at least enough for such a thing. So cost was not really an issue, unless my other sister and/or my mam would have disagreed with it. So it was really about service, and I would have been willing to pay big time for it and would have praised, promoted the person who would have arranged it.

But no, my remark about possibly attending through Skype, through video conferencing was put down with ‘there is no internet available at the location’. And this is about the funeral of my sister, imagine. And I understand it was not the undertaker who made that remark, but I guess a good undertaker, a good businessman, would have picked up the request and would have made it happen, would have find a way. And I guess it wouldn’t even have been that difficult. As I can’t imagine there would not be some kind of wireless internet nearby. Or maybe even wired. So the undertaker could have earned big time, just put some laptop somewhere, arrange an internet connection for two times one hour, church and cemetery, pay maybe € 100.00 or probably less, and charge € 1,000.00 or something. Everybody happy.

And as I guess you already figured out something fully different happened. As somehow it seems the undertaker was only focused on getting the confirmation of the order for the funeral, the signature of the person who would pay for the funeral. And of course I can imagine that side also, as funerals are expensive and it may not always be easy to collect the money from the heirs. So yes, getting a signature from someone giving the order for the funeral and taking the obligation to pay is part of the business, how cruel or unethical that may feel. But that’s the business of undertakers. And as far as I know they are paid quite well for it. And I guess they deserve it also, as I wouldn’t want to do their job. But the way how he did it is in my opinion unethical, maybe even criminal. And don’t get me wrong, I was not there, so I don’t know the facts. But I do know my mam, and I guess she was seen as the ‘weak person’ and the ‘target’ having the money, or control of the money. So somehow the undertaker made my mam believe that she was the only heir and responsible for everything, which as far as I could find out is not true. So he made her sign for all kinds of things, five signatures, probably including the order for the funeral. And yes, what option did she have? She was probably still in shock, as my sister died very unexpectedly after being ill for only one day or so. So what else would you do if there is so much pressure as of course cooling equipment needs to be arranged as soon as possible. And would you check if it was all true what the undertaker said, as he deals with these things daily? Or ask another undertaker to make another proposal? I don’t think so, I even thing I wouldn’t do that, even though I am aware of all this ‘business’ around death, around funerals and cremations and such.

And please don’t get me wrong, business is business and people have their own responsibilities, even in a situation when someone died, although if it’s your daughter I’m not sure if you could consider the mother taking proper decisions. So it’s okay someone asks for a certain price in a certain situation, same as a can of coke in the middle of the desert could be worth a fortune. But my point is that I think this undertaker made some big mistakes by not telling my mam that my other sister, my mam and I are responsible together for everything. And it would have been in his advantage if he would have involved me, as I happen to know how much money my sister has. And I wanted the funeral arranged as my mother wanted it. And I would have probably pushed for cars in procession provided by the undertaker, as I would have wanted my mam (and my sister) to be comfortable in such a situation, where now they used their own cars, even cars from other family members as there was not enough space. And I wanted to have the internet connection, which was very important for me. And I wanted to pay for it.

So by not focusing on service, but apparently focusing on ‘money’ and ‘signatures’, this undertaker not only missed something like € 3,000.00 additional turnover for the online video feature and the procession cars for himself. And he did not only created a very dissatisfied client, me, or maybe even multiple dissatisfied clients, as later on also my mam and my sister may join me in my dissatisfaction, but probably even lost money and has to deal with a complaint or even lawsuit as I have the feeling he misrepresented the legal situation by making my mam believe she was the only person responsible.

And I still don’t get it, as I asked my mam to pass on my phone number and e-mail address to the undertaker the very first moment I was involved, like them being on the way to “De Losserhof” to arrange everything for the funeral. And imagine, I am the brother, so to me it would have even be just plain courtesy to just call or e-mail me and send condolences, no matter the matters to arrange or the legal matters or the payments or the budget.

But no, he decided to deal with my mother only. So well, I decided to deal with him, even if it were only to let him know that I believe he made some mistakes here.

Crime thoughts

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We had quite an exciting night last night as the house of the friend where we stayed to be able to attend the funeral of the mother of another friend was robbed. And it was a very strange robbery where nothing seems to add up. As somehow there was too much coincidence like a large amount of money hidden in the quarters of the friend where we stayed. And another relatively large amount hidden in another place. And not too many places searched or disturbed so much except especially the room where the money was. As also some of our stuff was searched, but not really that thorough.

And of course now, my friend in panic, emotionally disturbed has all kinds of thoughts how this could have happened and who could have done it, of course including the four of us, who stayed at her house at the time.

So with my newly learned knowledge of looking at the positive side of things the first thing I tried was to calm my friend down, which of course didn’t work, as she was just robbed and was very upset. And as the hours passed I tried to search for something positive in this, for her or for any other person. And I couldn’t really find anything as there was quite a lot of money gone, some expensive and valuable equipment and worst of all of course a feeling of betrayal as it seemed the robbery had been done by someone who knew either our friend or the apartment.

What I did see over the day was that the negative thoughts of some of the people involved in this whole thing somehow seemed to make things worse, especially for themselves. And basically I was not really involved as nothing I did or didn’t do would have made any difference, so of course for me it was relatively easy to not involve myself in the whole negative thing I saw develop, although at a certain point I also got kind of angry at all those people blaming themselves and others for what had gone wrong, where to me in the end this was nothing more than some kind of burglary with or without inside knowledge, nothing more, nothing less.

And yes, interesting to somehow be more a spectator than someone participating in all the emotions and stuff going. And the most interesting thing for me was that basically everything was based on perceptions and hardly anything on ‘reality’ as until now nobody, of course except the people involved in the robbery itself, knows what had exactly happened and why and how. And despite me as indicated not being really involved, although of course I am a suspect as I was staying in the house when my friend was not there, I think with my recently learned skills of being more, well, disciplined, and more observant, more analysing what was going on and what I could learn from it, I think I did pretty well in handling this situation, where I saw almost everybody else somehow being drawn into this drama, a drama that was just created around perceptions around the actual event.

So I saw a lot of negative thoughts and feelings mainly backfiring to the people having them. Where to me in the end this was just a simple burglary where someone must have entered the house, took some stuff and then left the house. Nothing more, nothing less. But what was the worst around these feelings based on perceptions of the persons themselves or based on the perceptions of others were doing an awful lot of damage to some relationships, either developing or already existing for a long time.

So maybe the positive of all of this, at least for me, is to learn how dangerous perceptions are and how damaging actions based on those perceptions can be. And yes, I know I was not the person having been robbed and also not the person who might have made a mistake, so it is relatively easy for me to stay calm. But somehow I know that with my current knowledge and discipline and such I think I would have reacted much calmer and dealt with it much easier than the person involved.

So what stays in my thoughts related to the Principles of Success is to do things based on facts and not based on presumptions. So whatever happens, first analyse and figure out what is really going on, and then act.

I was very grateful today

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I was very grateful today being shown in the house of some apparently very rich people, where before I would just have been jealous. But today I really enjoyed someone putting so much attention in a beautiful house on the beach, creating such a beautiful place.

So yes, it seems good things are coming closer to me, it seems I am getting closer to the success I am looking for, or actually the successes I am looking for.

So thank you, Infinite Intelligence, for letting this happen to me, thank you!

What a day

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What a day was today. And it started something like last Friday or Saturday when I found that one of the hard disks in one of my main servers had malfunctioned. And this time it was a major thing as my main development environment was not available, meaning I couldn’t really work on my major project.

So I was very down and my mood was not so good the last few days, but somehow I have already learned something like ‘this too shall pass’ and something like ‘it can and just will be fixed sooner or later’. And what I learned the last few days that by slowly planning and doing the things needed to fix the problem, or actually problems, I slowly moved from a very unstable and not fully working system to a system that is now kind of working with at least a backup system that is working more or less and the major system in the process of being fully restored, probably tomorrow, but certainly somewhere this week.

And what I also learned is that writing about these things helps me, analyzing these things helps me to realize that things are not as bad as they felt when it actually happened. And I also know more and more that it is important to have backup systems, which I always had, but, like now, not fully in place.

But just like with aviation safety, I realize more and more that I do have backup systems in place, and yes, I also realize more and more that things do go wrong, like hard disks just fail every now and then.

So the next thing is to realize that even something like this, a major crash where I indeed lost quite some data, fortunately this time probably only private data, do happen, will happen. And that you just need to be prepared for that. And that I, and probably you, are more prepared than you think. At least if you think a little bit like me.

So next thing is to learn to not be so much affected by a simple, normal failure of a hard disk or something like that. As it is just part of life and if you are prepared for it, it’s not such a major thing. And with some proper planning it’s not even something to be emotionally affected by it, other than see the positive side that it was not as bad as it originally seemed.

But yes, do have safety features in place, as especially with mechanical stuff and such, things do fail, do have some kind of life time.