14 Comments

Reading this I cannot help but think about the difference emotions make. With effort, one can absolutely become adept at cutting off random people who one doesn't respect, dealing swiftly with unpleasant strangers, ignoring judgemental nonsense, maintaining indifference, it's an essential life skill. What is harder, perhaps impossible, is being able to do so with people with whom there is an emotional connection, however irrational that may be. Which is why we have such words as hamstrung, crippled, frozen, helpless, incapacitated. Its ghastly and idiotic, but for neurotypicals it's real and powerful and yeah, it sucks. We can only keep trying our best.

Expand full comment

Being the best version of you is always the best way to be

Expand full comment

I have been giving this some thought lately, as it is something you have said when people envy your lack of negative emotions, and I'm not sure I agree. It's a nice idea that there is some inherent rightness of fit, that we have tha nature we are 'meant' to (whatever that means), but I see no reason why the world should have arranged things like that, and I remain personally unconvinced that I wouldn't be better off with different qualities.

Expand full comment

I could use some work on my TAT, I tend to be a bit too forgiving.

Expand full comment

There is a lot of wisdom in these posts.

Expand full comment

Tit for tat is a pretty obvious strategy when there are no emotions involved

Expand full comment

It seems like an obvious strategy even when they are, if a person wishes to not allow another person free rein with their emotions.

Expand full comment

In my daily life I have to deal with too many people who lead with their emotions and will let you know that's the basis for what they do. It's maddening, I recently had a sales rep part with us and she explicitly stated that her feelings were all that mattered and she couldn't continue working because she doesn't like the clients as an entire class of humanity.

Expand full comment

That is quite a statement.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
October 15, 2021
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

Agreed

Expand full comment

My former employee was the person displaying a sense of entitlement. That all came out in her final interview. It was amazing the hear

Expand full comment

I feel like I need to clarify some things in my original comments. In sales the customer is not or at least should not be an adversary. I recall a district rep for one of our vendors talking about a salesman he knew whom he called "No repeat Pete". Pete, his real name, would be at a new dealer every time our rep made his rounds. Pete would essentially "defect" on every sale he made resulting in more commission for himself while creating an unhappy customer who never wanted to see him nor whatever company he was representing again.

I only use that example so that anyone not familiar with sales could understand that for a successful salesman the client should effectively be your accomplice.

I had another salesman who would make the purchasing agent an accomplice often with kickbacks and other sometimes illegal or unethical acts. He's been gone a long time now.

What happened with the recent sales rep was that she would do research on current and prospective clients then rather than looking for a way to relieve some pain point in their organization she would judge them based on her own emotional reactions based in her own worldview.

As it happened clients and potential clients of whom she approved gave us feedback that her behavior was unprofessional and those she didn't approve of were never contacted at all.

As I said, in the exit interview she admitted to all of this and didn't believe that it should be an issue

Expand full comment

I agree with you. Salespeople are often the ones that get the brunt of negativity from their customers, but what makes a great salesperson is the ability to take that negativity and make it work for them. A lot of people cannot do this, and a lot of people will poison sales and relationships either intentionally, or because they are simply not suited to the work. I have never understood this, but can only conclude that they are drawn by the notion of making large amounts of money on commission, without understanding what is necessary to continue in that line of work.

Expand full comment

I guess your definition of Karma stands for action and consequence. I am very drawn to the idea of "karma", as this world sometimes is unbeliavably shady regarding its TIT for TAT... it would be beautiful to think there's some balance. A lie I would love to believe, but no. I'm past that stage.

TAT stands as either a person effectuating TAT, or either, that your brain and mental characteristics are so detrimental that eventually they convert into your own TAT.

And they didn't change earlier because someone didn't have anyone TAT on them before.

Expand full comment