Cheers!

Everyone loves a cheerleader.  

Cheerleaders are animated,  positive, affirming people who will root for you with all of their energy. 

If you fail to finish a move, cheerleaders will be filled with compassion for your plight and will lift you up to try again with their encouraging comments.

Now here's a very unusual place where we could introduce the cheerleader:

Right when we are annoyed because someone forgot to remember what we have asked them to do (and they have already agreed to do it).

Not the typical setting you might envision.  

But borrowing the role of cheerleader at this time could possibly help us make the leap from a frustrated, complaining individual who is desperately trying to keep it together when someone steps on  his "sacred" ground to becoming instead a mentor, encourager and supporter.

When someone fails to act upon information we know they have  but instead resorts to old default behavior and our buttons get pushed, we are faced with the problem of how to respond.

If our buttons do get pushed and we have a reaction, then it is truly OUR issue that needs to get attention from us...and, if we can change the playing field and come out dressed as the cheerleader instead of the umpire...everything might go easier for us.

Here's an example of what we might say:  

"Oh, gee, sorry about that...I know you were working on handling that in a different way.  You'll get the hang of of it and pretty soon it will feel natural to you."

After we make this kind of statement  instead of unloading our annoyance, we can walk away from the interaction pleased that we took the HIGH ROAD instead of joining in and kicking up more static in the fray.

Just takes a SIMPLE SHIFT in role-playing...different lines...different moves...but the APPLAUSE we give ourselves after this dramatic shift would be astounding.  

Now we have become our OWN cheerleader, too...for we have managed to sidestep a drop into OUR old, negative, critical  behavior.

While we're at it, we might as well dream up a cool imaginary cheerleading outfit for the task.  Shopping in our imagination is just another way to have fun (at no cost to our budget) and to  increase the pleasure of our encounter.

Always, always access your creativity to solve a problem!

Go, team!




image from freecraftunlimited.com