If you mostly know me from reading my writing or spending time in a workshop with me, you hopefully think I am in decent command of my emotions.
And yet, if you know me better or follow me more closely, while I try, I do not always succeed. Yup, human after all.
Last week I headed into our local UPS store to get a copy of a mailbox key made for a second user. It was at least the fourth time over the last two years I’ve tried to do this. At first, we were told it couldn’t be done.
Then they wanted us to both be there, which was hard to coordinate. In fact, we had managed to do that just two days before. But the person on duty was new and didn’t know what to do so asked us (ok, me) to come back two days later. Which I was doing.
That same gentleman was working the desk when I arrived. He didn’t even recognize me and my red/pink hair. I reminded him. He said he’d ask and walked toward the back of the store. Meanwhile, my smoldering frustration became genuine anger. So, I started to follow him. This was an answer I wanted to hear for myself.
Before I took two steps on the carpeted floor, a voice from the back yelled out to me that customers were not allowed in the back. She hadn’t heard me. She hadn’t seen me. She had felt my anger as soon as I started heading toward the room.
Now the story has a good ending, I got the keys and we had a great conversation about the civic organization the mailbox is for and a short lesson that convinced her she should start voting in state and off year elections.
But my point is my energy reached her before I did. It happens to us all every day. You have a sense of people just by being in their proximity. And they have a sense of you. What energy are you projecting?