I often giggle at the very Englishness of the word arse. In the US and throughout our TV shows and films from the US, people get called an ass, or an asshole and it seems more slick, quicker, more dynamic a way to insult someone than when we say it…

None of us want to be known or thought of as an arsehole, do we? And it is the fact that so many people seem to blissfully aware that they are one, that is the subject of todays blog.

There often comes a time in all of our lives, whereby we have a kind of ‘eureka’ moment and self-discovery that leads to some clarity of thought. We seem to gain that incredible insight that seems to have appeared out of nowhere… or was maybe just borne out of experience and a culmination of lifes observations.

Recently, I had an experience of afore mentioned clarity and some seemingly heaven sent insight while spending a period of time alone. There’s nothing like spending 12 hours solid in your garden on a beautiful day tending to your flowers, fruit and vegetables while everyone else is away to allow some introspection during solitude… At least, I did speak to the cat and a robin that insists on watching me whilst I garden, but had no human interaction during that time… I spoke to my plants at several stages too, in true Prince Charles style… Ahem…

People may argue against this notion, and I assure you this is coming from me and I have not been overly influenced by the elderly folk of the English seaside harping back to their former halcyon days… It has become increasingly more apparent to me, that as a society in general, our sense of empathy and kindness toward others has diminished. Our connection with individuals has lessened and our desire to help the person next to us is not what it used to be.

This notion is not coming from any of the books I have read recently, or from any of the numerous TV shows that transfix me regularly, but a product of the time I spent in my garden reflecting upon the previous couple of weeks…. I have a lot of interaction with my fellow citizens of planet earth during my holidays, through my therapeutic work, other work related travel, trainings that I run and life in general, and my notion comes from that interaction.

Having the middle aged lady behind the bagel shop counter look at you with contempt because you requested to have no butter on your bagel…. Countless people jumping the queue at the bar where you are running your courses while you were patiently waiting and obeying “social norms” and being polite as you were raised to do…. Perhaps more illuminating was the man who gave me a V sign and mouthed profanity at me. Apparently I was not in the correct lane in a massive 7 exit roundabout in an area I did not know at all well…

Our friends daughter getting bullied at school and the headmaster refusing to believe her because the bully is the daughter of a school governer… My wife being regularly unappreciated for going beyond the call of duty at work by her boss who has reduced her to tears through his manner and ridiculous and thoughtless way of man management.

Then when you watch the opening show of Big Brother and people get booed based purely on how they look and what accent they speak with before making any kind of informed decision, gets my hackles up…

I guess that a good psychology researcher would examine the reasons why and examine the structure of todays society that has led to this kind of uncharitable manner towards our fellow man, our brothers and sisters of earth.

As a side note here… If I get any happy clapping styled NLPers who now quote me that NLP presupposition that “the meaning of every communication is the response it receives” or anything quoted to me about needing more behavioural flexibility, then I may not respond with my usual politeness… Because that is what I am talking about here, a sense of politeness and the kindest intentions for those that cross our paths in day-to-day life….

You see, initially I thought the answer was all to do with me having unnecessarily high expectations created by the role I have in life… Professionally, people are incredibly polite and well- mannered with me and I thought that these other things were to do with the sharp contrast of real-life. I have gotten used to the many pleasantries, courtesies and formal displays of respect in the therapeutic environment and in my training room, that I had high expectations of the same in all other aspects of life… This is why I was struggling in vain to cope with abject rudeness and lack of consideration in the real world?

I don’t think this was the answer I was looking for though.

Maybe it is something to do with us being too consumed with our own life issues. It’s hard work to get concerned, empathic, and be pleasant to others when attempting to overcome our own hurdles in life… But is that too convenient an excuse to offer up?

perhaps it comes down to those countless hours that are consumed in front of our televisions and computer screens, maybe we are becoming a product of that… Maybe we tweet and facebook our interactions more than we actually play them out in real life… Or maybe we have become increasingly dissatisified with our lot that politeness seems the lowest thing on our importance agenda. The less time we spend actually interacting with others, the more time we spend living unchecked and unmonitored in our own psychological world and forgetting how to read the emotions and behaviours of others?

Is it really that difficult to be nice, pleasant, agreeable and constructive to our fellow humans? I mean, whatever the reasons are that are causing people like me to notice more of this in our society, surely there is a simple solution to it…. How about making more of an effort to be nicer to each other?

The next time you feel like screaming profanity at the driver going slower than you’d like on the road in front of you, imagine that the person is another human being, with a life, and issues and a family… How would you feel if your kids were being treated that way, or how about if they were treating others the same way as you…. Is that what you want to teach? Is that the legacy you want left in the world?

Every time I suggest that we all consider spending some time seeing things through another person’s eyes and stepping in to the shoes of another… People acknowledge that it is wise to do so… They tell me they know that stuff… But they rarely do it…. So I say to you people who are not doing it enough… And I mean really doing it… “Stop being an arsehole.”

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