Offended or learning a lesson?

It’s easy to get worked up by comment but is it really worth it?

The way I see this, a comment can be taken in 3 ways: 

• You don’t care about it. Essentially, it doesn’t have any impact on you.

• You care about it and you get angry.

• You care about it and you learn from it.

I don’t think that not caring about a comment is really helpful because you can miss a valuable lesson. I don’t see getting angry as a great way of dealing with it either: too many people get worked up because of a particular comment online or offline. This can only make things worse, and relationships become bitter.

This leaves us with the learning experience: you get something out of this event, and you can become a better person because of it.

This has to be the best option, although it’s far from easy to do. It’s far easier to simply complain about it and let the ego take over by saying things like “This person doesn’t know me” or “How dare you?”.

I’m really not good at this yet, and my default mode is to get angry most of the time, but at least if we consider it and take a step back to think about it, it’s already a better way of handling this. Maybe the person saying the comment isn’t aware that it could be hurtful, or perhaps it’s the way it is said that could’ve been done better, or maybe this person is really a jerk, and now you know more on what to expect.

Regardless of the outcome, keeping a clear head is the desired option as far as I’m concerned: we don’t want to overreact or put too much importance on it, or it can consume you needlessly.

It’s a work in progress, and there’s always room for improvement, so my comment for all of us is to breathe, take a step back and see what we can get from what was said.

What do you think? Let me know.