It's amazing how a comment can finally tip the scales for me and I go into reactive mode. It happened this evening when a colleague who helped me secure a business deal called to talk about the challenges I'm facing with the contract. One minute I was expressing myself rationally and the next minute I let out an emotional tirade and hung up. The trigger? "Constructive feedback". The core belief it triggered? No matter what I do, it's never good enough. The behavioural tendency? To give up. But something was different this time, and it could have been related to a previous experience of defeat earlier in the year. I was hired for a project but was met with extreme criticism of my work to the point where the distress was making me ill. During that time, I shared my experience with someone in a social setting and his comment drew me up short. He said, "Some people don't know when to quit." You see, all my life I was told I give up too easily, that I have a habit of running away. However, that question made me think: am I running away or setting limits? And when I emailed my employer to say that it was clear that I did not meet their expectations and I was resigning from the position, I realized that to some extent it was an assertive action, that I was setting limits. So this evening, although I got very emotional on the phone, after I hung up it was more like a release. It was like speaking my mind and setting up a boundary of thus far and no further. It's made the business relationship that much more difficult, but on a personal level I think they needed to hear how I was feeling.
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