While going to visit a client’s office, I had to use his elevator. And while I was going up to see him in his office, I took inventory of how I looked.
The elevator doors were mirrored and to my surprise when I looked into the reflective surface, I noticed a nasty smudge on my freshly cleaned dress shirt. Knowing the importance of making a good impression, I looked closer at my smudge shirt in the reflective elevator door and though, how did that get on my shirt it is a clean shirt? So I looked closer in what I thought was a mirror. Not only the shirt had a smudge, but also there appeared to be stained with coffee. Again shocked by my discovery I looked closer in the mirror and found what appeared to be a stain that seemed to be getting bigger by the moment.
Finally I reached my floor and dashed into a bathroom to look at my shirt. Of course the smudge was still there however it was in a different place. I protested out loud, “How is that possible?” Another gentleman entered the bathroom and stopped in his tracks asking me what I was doing. I briefly told him my discoveries of all the smudges but had a hard time figuring out how a stain was able to seemingly moved. Then he laughed. Seeing little humor in my “dilemma” I kindly retorted by asking why my situation was so funny to him.
Well first of all you look fine and there is nothing on your shirt, the kind man explained. The “stain” on your shirt is a cleaning streak left behind by the cleaning crew in the elevator as he had a very similar discovery the other day. And after closer investigation, the other marking was from another streak on the bathroom mirror. My vision was distorted by bad cleaners and poor lighting.
So I laughed and thanked the man.
Lesson Here – Sometimes things in life and in business appear worse than they really are. In fact some things that we “see” exist only in our heads and when we go to fix them then they become problems. Imagine if I had attempted to clean my shirt and walked into my client with a wet shirt, or was late or worse yet lost the courage and cancelled my meeting all together. My friend in the bathroom became my coach by helping me to realize that I was chasing a phantom and saw things that my distorted prospective had issues in seeing.
Dave Josephson is the CEO of The Growth Coach® – of Jax, A leverager of natural born talent – coach, writer, and speaker who enables business professionals to remove their clutter so that they get out of their own way. In the end, his clients
enjoy their businesses the way they originally intended. Contact him at 904-253-7845 or visit www.TheGrowthCoachofJax.com