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Appreciate Your Adversaries

Guest post by: Michael Hume

Article Overview: It's the season of love and joy. Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus, who brought a message of love to the world and taught us to love our enemies... which many of us find hard to do. If you struggle with loving your enemies, maybe you can start by appreciating your adversaries....

Appreciate Your Adversaries

If You Can't Bring Yourself To Love Your Enemies It's the season of love and joy. Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus, who brought a message of love to the world and taught us to love our enemies... which many of us find hard to do. If you struggle with loving your enemies, maybe you can start by appreciating your adversaries.

You end up with adversaries in life... people who oppose your aims and endeavors from time to time. This can happen if you do nothing "wrong" - I've coached countless executives and business owners who, for no greater crime than that of trying to do their best (or presuming to start a business), find they have opponents who might be motivated by anything from envy of success to prejudiced hatred.

Remember, there are two kinds of people in the world, and in each of us. I call them "The Entrepreneur" and "The Victim." The former is the personality which, whether or not involved in a commercial enterprise, is positively motivated, seeks to create, is self-reliant (in a worldly sense), and sees life as good-getting-better. The latter might own a business (though it's unlikely he'll be long successful), but is negatively motivated, seeks to tear down, relies on the government or others, and always sees life as bad-getting-worse. These two characters battle each other inside each of us, and the way to "win" is to feed your inner Entrepreneur and starve your inner Victim. And one of the best ways to accomplish both of these at once is to avoid the temptation to thrash your adversaries, and instead to appreciate them.

You might be an Entrepreneur-dominated type, and your adversaries are the coffee-klatch Victims in your life who sit around and whine together about how bad things are... and then snipe at you behind your back. How do you appreciate such people (especially when times are tough and you're tempted to join them)? The answer is that, while it's often difficult, you can find something redeeming and positive in everyone.

See your adversary first as a person, just like you, who is fighting the same internal battles and losing to her inner Victim. She still has an inner Entrepreneur, and it's probably a pretty hungry part of her personality. You might be able to help her feed it by NOT doing what everyone else around her does - criticize, complain, compete, and give up on her. Give it a little creative thought, and I'll bet there's something you can find about which your Victim friend feels positive. Once you do, give more creative thought to how you can feed that part of her life. Is it a kind word about how neat she keeps her files? Is it a genuinely-interested ongoing conversation about her kids (don't try to fake it!)? Does she have a hobby you can focus on?

Be the person she learns to go to for positive reinforcement - for a quick meal for her inner Entrepreneur - and she will likely slow her opposition to you. She might even stop. And while you shouldn't count on it, she might even change!

You might even be a person who's been at the mercy of your own inner Victim at some point in your life. How did you pull yourself out of that ditch? Who helped you reconnect the wires to your positive side? How did they do that?

Times are very tough, and experts say they're going to get a lot worse before they get better. That's not a call-to-arms to your inner Victim, but rather a challenge to your better nature. It's not enough just to try to stay positive... you have to appreciate your adversaries, early and often, every hour, every day. Your Entrepreneurial spirit has to infect as many Victims as possible. We got into this mess together, and that's exactly how we'll climb out of it.

It's a tall order... but if there's anything an Entrepreneur loves, it's a challenge.

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Article Tags: entrepreneurship, health wealth and happiness, inspirational leadership, personal responsibility



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