Imagine you are back in kindergarten. Your life is very simple, half a day of school with plenty of drawing, snacking, and of course recess! There are rules, but one sticks out above the rest, the golden rule: “Treat others the way you want to be treated.”

This golden rule gets expanded and expanded as we grow and start to learn how to navigate through the world. Sadly, the more we are exposed to the “reality” of working in a competitive, corporate environment, the harder it seems to follow that one golden rule.

Imagine now a world where your boss mirrored your behavior. He treated you exactly how you treated him.

The waitress at the restaurant, the coffee shop barista, even your customer – they all acted as living mirrors of your mental state or attitude, whether it was positive or negative.

How different would we act if we had to face ourselves all day, everywhere we went?

I bring all of this up because I have been frustrated lately with people who aren’t treating me the way I want to be treated – the way I believe I deserve to be treated.

Unconsciously, I had changed a simple word that set me up for nothing but disappointment. Instead of the rule saying, “The way you want to be treated,” I had changed it to, “The way you expect to be treated.”

I was obligating those around me to act an expected way. When they didn’t, because they are their own person with their own brain, I found myself disappointed – hurt even.

I was creating expectations based on nothing more than a belief I have about how I act. To be clear – it is just a belief!

I am positive there are days I believe I am being engaging, collaborative, and helpful when the reality is the total opposite.

I am evaluating people around me and comparing them to myself, and my biased memory of my behaviors.

If you believe in the zodiac, this can all be explained by the fact that Cancer is in Venus and Jupiter right now.

If you study leadership, I am stuck in the Control Cycle (a precise and actionable model that shows students of The Responsibility Process™ like me when we are operating from right/wrong evaluations, incorrect assumptions, and unmet expectations, rather than seeing what is true and responding to it).

Once again I find myself learning my favorite lesson: I can only control my responses.

Since I can’t really control other people’s behavior, I want to look at myself and stop evaluating those around me.

The golden rule is just the beginning. I believe and have written about the idea that we attract that which we receive. So I will continue to treat others the way I want to be treated in an effort to attract it, not create it.

My intention is to catch sooner.

I intend to catch sooner when I am evaluating other people’s behaviors based on my own beliefs.

I intend to catch sooner when I am behaving in a way the people around me don’t deserve. When someone is giving you an attitude or treating you poorly.

Imagine the people around you are a mirror, and the person you are looking at is nothing more than a reflection of yourself. How would you respond now?

Jessica Soroky, CSM

Recently turning 22 years old, Jessica is already a Certified Scrum Master with two years of practice in agile delivery and team leadership. She is also the youngest participant in The Leadership Gift™ Program and its growing worldwide community of leaders and coaches. After five years of non-profit development through Nellie’s Catwalk for Kids, Jessica continues her leadership journey in state government, not-for-profit, and private sector leadership studies.

Attention decision makers — For business Partnerwerks provides a unique and proven model for igniting ownership and self-direction. See Partnerwerks approach to sustainable change with measurable results enterprise-wide.