Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:00 — )
PROGRAM D-8024
I wonder if you’ve ever thought about how much time and energy you spend feeling hurt, and how that affects your performance and your ability to succeed. In thinking about how to manage our emotions under pressure, hurt feelings can be a very debilitating emotion.
If it were possible to measure how much productivity is lost, how many hours are wasted, how many jobs are half-done because somebody got their feelings hurt, I think we would be shocked. Obviously, sometimes our feelings are hurt legitimately; I understand that. My guess, however, is that’s only about twenty-five percent of the time. The majority of our hurt feelings come from being way too sensitive and offended far too easily.
As we examine this emotion of getting our feelings hurt easily, we have to recognize that it is a result of thinking that everything is all about ourselves! If someone forgets to say good morning to us as they walk by and we choose to let that hurt our feelings, it’s because we think they’re purposely slighting us and trying to hurt us. We’re thinking it’s all about us, instead of stopping to realize they’re probably just in a rush—thoughtless no doubt—but intending no negative message to us whatsoever.
As I’ve often said, people are not thinking about us nearly as much as we think they are! They’re thinking about themselves.
I urge you to examine yourself and determine if you are a victim of your own overly-sensitive feelings. If so, one of the best gifts you can give yourself is to overcome this tendency. Start making allowances for others. Unless you have firm proof that it has something to do with you, assume that it does not. Even if the other person’s behavior verges on being rude, just let them off the hook. Imagine an excuse.
I’ve written this prayer in my prayer journal from a wonderful devotional called A Diary of Private Prayer: “May I be willing to make the same excuses for other people that I make for myself.” Isn’t that a great prayer? After all, we let ourselves off the hook all the time! Pray that God will help you make excuses for others like you do for yourself and, in the process, learn to manage your tendency to get your feelings hurt too easily.