Teach People How You Want To Be Treated

Have you ever met someone that always gets lied to by their friends or significant others? Did you ever wonder why this person doesn’t seem to get it? He/ she lives in their own bubble and doesn’t see that that much of their perceived disloyalty from others is caused by their own actions.

These people many times are the only people in the room that don’t see that their relationships are based on a superficial web of half-truths and lies. It’s because these people ended up indirectly teaching the people around them how they wanted to be treated. The desire for them to fit in, to be respected or to preserve their fragile ego is the root of the problem. They do not want to hear the truth unless it will be congruent with their image of themselves.

For example, the owner of the company that I work for is an extremely distrustful and manipulative person. I believe much of his distrust stems from many times of being lied to or screwed over. These past experiences have formed his current situation. The relationships he has with his employees are those based on fear and false promises. He is a person who always asks rhetorical questions such as, “Am I not always fair?” or “When have I ever not respected you?” The only answer you can provide him as an employee is a meek “Yes” even though your real answer is “All the time!”. He truly believes that he is honest, fair and respectful of others even though others do not see this. His own self identity is further reinforced by these “forced” answers from people who are not put in a position to tell him the truth for fear of losing their job.

One of our long time employees left the company about a week ago so he could pursue a better opportunity in California. However the owner found out today that this employee had never left New York and was now working for the competitor. When he found out, he said to me, “People will all screw you!” He was so angry that he had been lied to that he was cussing and swear with no restraint for the display of the whole office (this has become a usual occurrence in our office). His feelings of hurt are understandable however this level of unprofessional behavior just added to people’s perception of him in the office as being . As you read on you will realize that he had made his own bed.

I sat there thinking, “Hmmm…. maybe you should have treated your past employees differently, this would not have happened. The reason why this employee had to lie was that because the last 5 employees that worked in his department who left got screwed out of the commissions they had earned while employed with the company. These people, for the most part, had been acceptable employees that never did anything to deserve getting screwed. However, the owner was vengeful angry that these people had left him ad decided that they would have to fight him in court to receive their monies. So why would things be any different with this guy?? That is why he chose not to tell him.

His choice was to either tell the owner that he was leaving to work for another competitor and guarantee that he would lose a few thousand dollars worth of back-pay commissions due to the owner feelng betrayed OR lie to him and tell him a story and have a good chance of getting paid the money he honestly earned?

I don’t condone lying, however, this person never had the opportunity to do the right thing. It is sad that this had to happen this way, but this result was caused by the owners past behavior towards the employee as well as other past employees.

To Illustrate the same principle about teaching others how you want to be treated…Another example is, I have a friend who’s girlfriend is quite insecure. She always has to be by his side all the time. She ends up smothering him and always keeping tabs on him. So on the rare occurrences he is out by himself, she is always checking up on him. He is always forced to lie about what he is doing and where he is at because she does not accept the truth as more important than what she wants to hear. She has taught him that it is okay to lie to her as long as it makes her happy. Their relationship is now built on a foundation of lies instead a foundation of truths.

All these people have provided an instruction manual on how people should treat them.

They create rules such as:

“If you tell me something that I don’t like, I will create pain toward you.”

“If you lie to me and tell me what I want to hear, you will not be yelled at.”

“If you tell me the truth, if it hurts, I will get angry at you.”

“If you trust me enough to think that I will pay you without legal action, you are sadly mistaken.”

“If you tell me I am wrong, you will be in danger of losing your job.”

These people have chosen to surround themselves with people who have been conditioned to tell them what they want to hear. The people that aren’t, they are no longer friends with. By only allowing people to tell them what they want to hear they are really living a life based on a false self image and filtered communication. But in the end will only make them suffer again and again. Sometimes the truth hurts. Living in your self created world of denial will only prolong the inevitable and increase the level of anguish that will surface at a later date.

The lesson to be learned is that it is not always OTHER people who disappoint you, many times it may be YOU that taught them to treat you this way. Stop taking yourself so seriously and start teaching people that you WILL listen to them with an open mind and no consequence. ONLY THEN will you unlock the secret to consistent fulfilling relationships.