Interactions – Part 1

How we decide to interact with one another determines the quality of our relationships – the better the quality, the stronger the impact. How do you want to change the world? The following are a few ideas of how you can start to change your world and the world around you.

One night during the Christmas holiday my wife and I had an open evening alone at the house. The kids were off doing things on their own so we got to decide what we wanted to do with this unexpected time together. Long story short, we mutually agreed to plop down on the couch and watch a movie – exciting stuff right? After scrolling through the Netflix library, which can be very challenging at times, we settled on a Christmas Holiday movie that you would have found on the Hallmark Channel in Christmas past.

Like the Groundhog Movie

It was titled The 12 Dates of Christmas by Director James Hayman, the basic premise was that of one of my favorite movies – Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. Truth be told, initially we chose the movie because it was my time to sacrifice and take one for the team as my wife usually will watch a more action based movie that I like to watch, so I took the hit and sadly went in pessimistically (something I need to work on). At any rate, I had a bowl full of popcorn, I was sitting on the couch with my beautiful wife and I got to watch a movie – not bad – so I shut my mouth and pressed on.

It started out predictably, but as I surrendered and the movie began to capture my thoughts and heart I realized the premise was exactly like Groundhog Day and I was hooked. If you are unfamiliar with the storyline from Groundhog Day, it is simple. The main character was resigned to repeat the same exact day over and over again until he got the day right. Now, we could have long discussions on what “right” means, but for the purpose of this blog post, right will mean helping others realize that they are not alone and that help, togetherness and community are always right there with the people you come across. The trick is finding a way to break through the cellophane barrier that tends to stand between us and other people. This barrier can present itself through doubt, fear, comfort level, perceived time constraints, laziness, unawareness, etc. All of these types of things can get in the way of a person making a conscious decision to interact.

This conscious decision to interact, for me, was the main point of the two movies. If the main characters did not interact in the right way, they had to do the day over again – until they got it right. However, as the characters character changed the helping verbs “had to” shifted to “got to”. Bam!!!! Don’t miss this point! It is incredibly powerful and the key to shifting our ability to impact our world. Because after the characters in the movie went through the 5 steps of grief/denial (1. Denial and Isolation; 2. Anger; 3. Bargaining; 4. Depression; 5. Acceptance) several times and finally ended on true, not selfish, acceptance, they were able to move to the “got to” option, and started effecting lasting change, not only in their life, but in the lives of others.

Awareness

The first step, in my experience, should be awareness. Shifting your attention to things that you might not have known were there all along. To help in the process I suggest the following Phases…

Phase One – Opportunity Identification: Quantify the number of interaction opportunities that you have in a given week. Become aware of all of the opportunities that you have during a given day and record that number for a week. As you make this a daily goal you will become more aware of potential opportunities you have to affect change in your world if you choose to. There are more opportunities than you realize. Just start to count from the moment your eyes open to the moment they close at night. Count yourself, your significant other, your children, your friends, your taxi driver, your fellow workers, the people at the coffee shop, the drivers in the car next to you, the person sitting next to you on the train, etc. etc. etc. If you already know the potential opportunities, then you should move to the next phases as soon as possible, and get started.

Let’s check-in in my next post, Interactions – Part 2, and start the planning phase so that we can move from awareness to action. See you then.