Blessing?

In my training programs for teachers or trainers, leaders or managers; I start with a wish, ‘May you get audience like you!’ And then I add that my wish could be a blessing or curse depending on their attitude reflected in their actions towards the one communicating with them.

The loaded blessing implies that if they are positively responsive to what comes before them, the boon sought that they received a similarly positive response from the audience to their presentations. However if they were indifferent or negative in their response, the curse wished for a similar negative response from the audience to their presentation.

So often, so many of us decry the passive or regressive response of our listeners. However, it is pertinent to ask ourselves whether we are culprits to similar behaviour when we are on the other side. When we switch roles, we must choose to be what we expected the others to be when they were cast in the same role that we have now assumed.

If we want others to listen to us, we must be good listeners when it is our turn to do so. If we seek responsive participation, we too must be enthusiastically proactive in our role as participants. If we seek applause in the right places, we too must be generous in our appreciation when it is merited.

For the blessing to be a true boon, not curse, we must choose to be better at our behaviour which is worthy of the same high standards that we set for others. It is said so well that ‘lessons are meant to be learnt, not taught!’ We must imbibe the attitude of being to others what we want them to be to us!

Let’s BE BETTER at keeping the blessing not the curse
by being to others what we want them to be to us!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.