Life is like a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use. – Charles Schultz
What does that mean?
Like most of the roads around town (with some notable exceptions, like Florida & Kansas), there hills and valleys. It goes up and down. You need to shift gears, as the correct gear for climbing a hill is seldom the proper gear for descending it.
There are also winds to deal with, and traffic signals. The proper gear, even on a flat road, will be different going into the wind than with it. Is the proper gear to get going from a stop the same as the proper gear for an extended ride through the countryside?
Why is flexibility important?
Most of us are creatures of habit. When we face a certain situation, we react in a certain way. We may end up with many more than 10 standard reactions, but we certainly have more possible reactions than we are accustomed to using.
Similarly, my ten-speed bike sees probably four speeds regularly. Lowest gear for starting up a hill, about halfway up the rear sprocket in low range for normal starting up or going uphill, that same rear gear transformed by the high range for general cruising, and ‘top gear’ for going like blazes down a long shallow slope. The other six rarely see any use, unless there is a minor change in slope or wind that makes an adjustment up or down one sprocket in the rear worthwhile.
In life, everything is different. Perhaps just a little, but it is different. Dinner may be at 6pm on the dot, but (hopefully) the food isn’t the same every night. Work may start at the same time and place every day, but (again, hopefully) there is something different today. Even if your job is to ask if they want fries with that, the customers will be different from day to day.
Each of these differences give us the option of trying a different gear. Yes, the standard gear may be close enough for you, but is it good enough for the other person? What can you do differently that will make your response fit better with the other person’s needs? Even if we think we aren’t, we’re all in a customer service position. Unless you really don’t care.
Where can I apply this in my life?
I’ll admit it, I’m a creature of habit. When I ride, I only change out of the “usual” gears when extraordinary conditions apply. When I’m on autopilot (most of the time), I just get on and ride, doing the same thing I always do, riding the same path I always ride.
Similarly, in life, unless there is a clear advantage to changing our behavior, we tend to be reluctant to do so, even if it is only out of habit. This is largely because things tend to get pidgin-holed, binned (for those who understand the term) or otherwise lumped together into convenient (for us) groups. That way we only have to have a minimal number of responses.
The challenge is to take each case as a unique event and tailor a stock response to best fit the needs of the other person. If your job is to design websites, you probably have a couple standard sites you have built that cover a fairly broad range of users. The question I would ask is “Do any of them fit exactly what the user needs or wants?”
I realize that time is money and you deserve compensation for what you do. I am simply asking are you giving them a menu that says “no substitutions” or are you offering to help them get what they want from this particular starting point? If you’ve ever been to a restaurant where substitutions are not allowed, how did that make you feel? Were you a valued customer, or just another mouth to feed?
We’re all human, and hope (and deserve) to be treated better than that. There is no real way to do this other than to focus on the other person as being someone in need of assistance (even if, to you, they are a pain in the neck). Being a large person, I have learned a long time ago that one size most definitely does not fit all. This applies to people and situations, as well as to shoes and clothes.
We need to be flexible in our responses and at least put a little effort into meeting the needs of other people. Remembering the times we have been treated in a less than stellar manner will do one of two things. It will either be your excuse for treating others as you have been treated, or it will serve as a reminder to always treat others better than you have been treated.
Please note that this saying could also be applied to a narrow life, which consists only of video games and work, or work and the local tavern. People who live like that are short-changing themselves, because there is so much else out there for them to experience.
From: Twitter, @problogger
confirmed at : http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/charlesms189863.html
Photo by Jeremy Bronson
