When was the last time you were annoyed with someone? You were sure that what happened was the other person’s fault.
Have you heard the saying “When you point your finger at someone else, three fingers are still pointing back at you”?
This was my experience recently.
I’d signed up for four free seminars run by the same organization. The day before the first seminar, I realized that I had other appointments that clashed with the second and third seminars.
Pulling out the paper that I’d received when I signed up, I noticed a 5,000 yen cancellation fee!!!
I wasn’t happy. “How can they charge a 5,000 yen cancellation fee for a free seminar?” I thought. “They didn’t tell me about the 5,000 yen cancellation fee when I signed up. That’s so dishonest and sneaky!!! Maybe I should get legal advice…” All sorts of blame and accusation was whirling around my head for much of the evening.
Suddenly I realized how negative my thinking was and asked myself how I could look at this differently.
In the West, we’re taught to “read the small print” when signing a contract to be sure we don’t agree to something we don’t want to. In Japan, usually the person providing the contract reads aloud a few highlighted parts, and then people sign without even reading the rest!
But this cancellation fee wasn’t even written in “small print” – it was in very large, bold, underlined text. I just hadn’t looked at the paper properly.
That’s when I remembered about the three fingers pointing back.
In psychoanalysis, this unconscious blaming of others is known as “projective identification.” We identify someone to project unwanted feelings onto. I had “unwanted” feelings about potentially paying 10,000 yen for the privilege of NOT attending two seminars!
But really, the seminar organizers hadn’t done anything wrong. They were simply doing their best to reduce the number of last-minute cancellations. I was the one at fault because I hadn’t looked at the information.
So what happened?
I joined the first free seminar (which was FABULOUS) and explained to the organizer that the timing for the second one was difficult for me. He happily changed my registration to another day that worked better for me. And I adjusted my schedule so that I could attend the third seminar.
It’s amazing to me that I was getting so negative and on the point of not joining any of the seminars. But then I changed my perspective and was able to enjoy a series of HUGELY valuable free seminars.
And now I’m grateful for the cancellation policy because, without it, I wouldn’t have made the effort to reschedule so that I could attend all the seminars!
The next time you’re tempted to blame and point the finger at someone else, think about how you can look at it differently.
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Thanks to Keri Iwata for the photo.