Have you ever fallen for this trick? Someone sticks their fist out as if to hand you something and your immediate reaction is to put your palm out to accept it. Next thing you know, the “gift” turns out to be a discarded candy wrapper or a bug or something equally as lame. Hopefully you only fall for it once and then after that you learn to pause and ask what the other person is holding before blindly accepting your fate.
While we may learn not to accept trash from our friends as a joke, sometimes I think we fail to apply this instinctive behavior to real life situations. How many times have we accepted a commitment only to find out it’s not the “gift” we expected? Our knee-jerk reaction is to just accept things when they are handed to us. We often fail to realize that we have a choice. We can refuse. We can say “no”.
We don’t have to be fooled by the “gift”, we can choose to get more information and then make a better choice. I hope that 2009 is a year for you to pause before accepting and that you choose your gifts wisely.
