My 4 year old daughter loves to experiment with water and what it can do. She tends to pick up different objects each day, tries to fill water in them, drowns them in the bucket, see if they come up and float or stay down.
As I was watching her take pride in her discovery, Irealized how relationships as I had known them, had the power to sink or floata person.
There are many people each of us have in our lives, who havethis sink effect. They would just say something and send you spinning down aspiral. In other words, make your happiness sink. We all have those kind ofpeople around us, right? Sometimes by default and sometimes by chance. I haveknown such people in my extended family, at work and even in business.Sometimes they know they will make you sink, yet they pretend as though theydon’t know any better and sometimes they lack the wisdom to know otherwise.Either way, they make you sink.
And then there are these people who have the ability to makeyou float. They would be so accepting of you, would just get you and would justknow how to elevate your state of happiness. It is fun being around such peopleand I guess we are all naturally drawn to such people. Again, I have known suchpeople in my extended family, my work and at business. The world, ishence, made of sinkers and floaters. I don’t know a third kind…maybe there aremore, but I never paid enough attention (please do share your thoughts) “ Ilove creating theories from experience.
Here is my thumb rule on ‘The Floatation Principle of Life’(just coined this and if it exists somewhere, please do let me know!) “ if ‘sink’does not turn into ‘float’ sometime soon and you start running out of patience,move the ‘sinkers’ away and if you can’t, move away from them. It is however,important that we don’t dismiss the ‘sinkers’ right away. Some amount ofsinking is good, of course. It is a good break from the constant floating and abit of change always does some good.
Constant sinking, however, is not good. Life is tooshort to spend it sinking. Get some floaters. Get the sun!
Namrataa Arora is acertified coach and specializes in life and careertransition coaching for women across the world
