Getting To The Heart

Yesterday, I chanced across a quote that struck me as being profoundly true.  It went something like this:

The way you make others feel about themselves is a reflection of who you are at your own core.

Think about that for a moment.  Don't you often find that people who make others feel small and nasty about themselves by making cutting remarks or slighting them for no reason are most often the very people who are small and nasty?

Or that the people who do little, caring things which lift people around them up and make them feel best about themselves, the very people who never take all the glory for themselves but instead project the credit and kudos onto others, are so often the very people who are the best among us?

One way that I have often judged character in a new professional acquaintance is how they treat their employees or people who are serving them in some capacity, like a waiter or a sales clerk.  Do they treat that person the same as they would their boss, with courtesy and mutual respect across the board?  Or do they treat that person as something less merely because they perceive the staff person as being less or, worse, because they see the staff person as someone who can't be used to gain an advantage?

That sort of "my behavior depends on what I think you can do to advance me" mindset has always driven me absolutely insane, probably because most of my family were working class folks with a very tough work ethic and I was taught to never "get above my raisings," as my Granny used to say to me.  But honestly, doesn't the way someone else acts toward a waitress or a mailroom clerk speak volumes about who they are to you, too?

It isn't an absolute, but it is certainly something to think about as you go about your day to day existence.   It is definitely something I have been contemplating about myself ever since I read the quote.

How do you make others feel?  And what does that say about who you really are?


(Gorgeous photo via Anna Federowicz. Do click through the link here and take a peek at this beautiful shot in a larger size -- it is exquisite.)