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Your Arch-enemy Has a Secret...
I had a female Arch-Enemy until two nights ago, when a stunning and unexpected thing happened.
She APOLOGIZED.
***
I was honored to be sitting at the dinner table with actor Jeremy Piven during his benefit, and soon the hilarity shifted over to a nearby club.
This was an actor I’d been inspired by for years, seeing him struggle to find acclaim while under the shadow of the career of his long-time friend, Jon Cusack. Cusack and his famous acting family had also trained at the acting institute started by Piven's father and mother - also seated regally at the table - and the very reason for the gathering.
Here's a photo: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4618290&id=515857028
Piven's skill had never been in doubt – it only took hitting the right opportunities at the right time eventually. The guy was cracking jokes left and right having the whole table howling, and soon we’d be moving over to a nightclub where he was going to auction off a walk-on role on his star vehicle, HBO’s Entourage.
That would have been amazing. Maybe I shouldn’t have tipped off his staff that the role would go for an exponentially higher price if it was a speaking role.
Suddenly, Mr. Piven announced that it WAS, effectively pricing me right out of it.
I turned in amused disappointment when there she was.
My gossipy, nasty, cruel, snarky, unpredictable, downright evil ENEMY.
I came face to face with a long time enemy.
There are various ways of sizing up an enemy of either gender, and I certainly lay that out for you in the article I wrote on my Psychology Today Blog:
The thing is, with the method of quickly getting a picture of someone else’s maturity of character – MindOS – you can just as quickly get away from them and avoid them.
Most guys wouldn’t tend to bother even caring about character or maturity in a woman at first. It’s all about how beautiful they are, friendly, and how they make you feel that “special feeling.”
Yet character analysis carries ENORMOUS power of the type most people do not tap into. Which gives you:
· An immediate measure of their boundary strength, which allows you a bird’s eye view to the future, when they will likely drain your resources, offend or hurt you, or just as badly, be exceptionally needy.
· A picture of what kind of social “deals” will be struck with them – are they a Win/Win person or Win/Lose person? - whether you will tend to come out on the losing end of the stick, and how insidious and sneaky by which that happens.
In case you haven’t immediately guessed, these two bullets are the two most crucial measures of another person’s level of maturity I have devised for you, and explain globally in the brand new MindOS Mastery Program, here:
How did it get to this moment?
I had hired the woman in question once to do some publicity for me, but unfortunately the combination of a big learning curve to get started, and an accidental delete button on my Facebook account had led to the demise of communication between us.
Which is to say that I didn't hear from her for over a month, and the more I waited, the angrier I got - to the point that I wasn't going to call, and trumped it up to a bad investment.
The "Incident"
So a month still later, I ran into her at a party, walked up and said hello, only to have her back quickly turn to me. She chatted happily with her girlfriends even as I lingered, trying to figure out what in the world I had done to deserve insult on top of injury. After all, I had paid her, seen her utterly disappear, and then not even a hello back?
This was just too much. I had asked some mutual friends what the issue was, figuring losses aside, former associates can at least be cordial.
The word back was that she had been gossiping about me for the month, thought I was a bad guy, and this was astounding to me.
Now it made sense why two other friends had dropped out of sight too - she had "gotten to them." I figured that I'd do my best from then on to avoid her without inconveniencing myself.
Kinda hurtful stuff at first, but what can you do? It would soon be out of sight, out of mind.
Your Arch-enemy's Secret
Smarting from my own outwitting of my little opportunity with the auction, here I was in her sights. She looked at me the way a driver late for work stares down a crossing pedestrian on a leisurely stroll.
Intent, but with restrained patience.
She approached me carefully, and as she went to hug me, I flinched involuntarily - surely this was going to be where she stop shooting eye-daggers and start hacking me to bits with a real one.
Instead, she said, "I'm sorry. I was wrong about you."
What?? Two damaged friendships, a whole lot of money down the drain, and quite a few confused nights wondering what in the world her problem had been, and I get this? Could it be another trick?
I stopped to look closer at her face - she had lost weight. A lot of it. She looked great in a way she'd never looked to me before. It's not that I had ever been interested in "that" way; just that she appeared somehow healthier, happier, and more authentic.
"It's like this. I didn't like myself before. I was unhappy. And when you quit me on Facebook, I really felt bad. Because I liked working with you so much."
Wow. There's a lesson for you, me and everyone in this kind of honesty and candid emotion. I melted. It didn't matter how rudely I'd felt treated before. This was a woman transformed from an Old Scrooge to some sort of female, good-karma, transformed Scrooge. And we are a full six months from Christmas.
This made perfect sense. When we're challenged, it can be hard to be friendly. When we are challenged, it can be hard to be happy.
She said, "I met a man, and at the beginning, there were some confusing things. I didn't want to mess up. I wanted to do things right by him. A noticed your book for women on my shelf - the one I was supposed to promote... Well the first time I read it, it didn't make sense to me, but this time, it seriously gave me all the answers. You are a total genius."
I could barely speak.
It seems so rare that people do a 180 degree change these days. Not that I'm the ultimate judge of her right to feel or express whatever she had wanted, and based on whatever experiences she has emotionally - but it's just so rare for people to apologize, review the past and set the record straight.
the secret of most of your own female Arch-enemies is that they actually LIKE YOU. Maybe even romantically. They may be cruel or rude or thoughtless not because you've done anything wrong, but possibly because they are unhappy, depressed, angry, maybe uncomfortable in their bodies, with all their sizes and shapes...
...and usually, there was some sort of misunderstanding - something crucial to the social connection has gone unsaid.
Above all, as difficult, strenuous, and uncommon to remember - or rediscover - it is always, always possible for even the most rude, unhappy person - the stranger whose face you barely noticed and the best friend betraying alike - to suddenly grow, suddenly change, suddenly rediscover his or her own ability to be kind to themselves first..
...and then to find the capacity to be kind to you at last.
Which is what you both had always deserved in the first place.
It's all about boundaries in friendships and business, and boundaries are an essential part of what the MindOS Mastery Course is all about:
