How to Accept the Human Moments

Are you able to accept the human moments?

The door slams, and the books are thrown on the counter. I ask somebody how they are and they respond rather harshly to me. I do not like their tone of voice, and my feelings are hurt. How can they speak to me like that? I deserve to be treated better than that. We have all experienced these moments. Not our prettiest of moments, but certainly our most human of moments.

We all struggle with accepting ourselves and each other.  We often set expectations and standards that are based on idealism and perfectionism, and then quickly experience disappointment and frustration. It is time that we stopped setting ourselves up for this.   We are all human – the truth of the matter is that each and every human is flawed, and we will disappoint and frustrate each other.  The human condition is that we will always make mistakes and let each other down, so we might as well learn to become reasonably comfortable with this.

We will behave poorly, and others will behave poorly towards us.  Step # 4 from my book “M.O.R.E” is titled “Accept the Human Moments”.  I can recall many times returning home from the office after a long day and being short tempered with my family.  I have also experienced a fair amount of days in which somebody else comes through the door and was irritable and short with me without any justifiable reason.  These are the human moments we each experience.  We can all recognize that being tired, hungry or overwhelmed is not a good excuse for bad behaviour, but if we are truthful with ourselves we know that we have all done it!  I am sorry, but if you try to tell me that you have never dumped your bad day on somebody else, then I am not going to believe you.

So how do we deal with these “human moments” without getting derailed by them? The key to accepting our human moments is in understanding that it is not all about you.  The reality is that most of the moments in somebody else’s life are theirs.  I understand the desire to make every moment personal and meaningful, but I think the road to an exceptional life requires you to live and let live.  Not everybody is going to be thinking about how they impact you each and every moment, nor is that necessarily going to be your prime focus for every moment.  It is natural to want others to care how we feel, but we need to accept that this will not be the case all the time.  If we can accept those human moments, speak our truth when somebody crosses a boundary, and also let go of what is not personal, then our chances of living an authentic and exceptional life are much greater.