It's Just Information

“It’s just information.” These are three important words with power and potential to keep us from getting stuck in the grip of the emotionally driven stories we often tell ourselves about the things that others do.

Think about a difficult experience you’ve had recently with someone in your life…maybe that person lied to you, maybe they were late to an important event, maybe they avoided you or said something hurtful, maybe they were distracted while you were trying to tell them something important. If you’re human like the rest of us, chances are you probably felt upset and interpreted the other person’s behavior as hurtful, rude, disrespectful, etc., and/or you probably told yourself that there must be something wrong with you to make them behave that way (you’re not important enough, you’re too needy, you expect too much, etc.). And chances are, once you started telling yourself the story about the other person and/or about yourself, your feelings of hurt, loss, anger, frustration, disappointment, self-loathing, self-pity, etc. began to expand. You might even have started adding to the story about other, similar experiences you’ve had, and, most likely, you ended up spinning yourself into a sticky web of pain, mistrust, and/or shame, which most likely impacted the way you are feeling, thinking, and acting currently.

Now, rewind a little, and imagine if when the original experience happened and the original upset feelings happened, if you could have taken a step back. Imagine if you could have just noticed your feelings and taken a couple deep breaths to give yourself some space to acknowledge and get curious about the feelings and thoughts that were showing up. And now imagine if, instead of immediately diving headfirst into story about the experience that may or not be true, imagine if you could have said, “It’s just information.” And really, it is just information. It’s a gift of information about what happened in that particular moment with that particular person, and you get to choose what you do with that information.

You get to choose. You can address it with the person, being curious and trying to get more information about what might have been going on with them. You can silently take note of it and add it to other pieces of information you have about that person’s behavior. You can use the information to decide that you don’t really want to be around the other person anymore. You can use the information as a mirror to show yourself a need to be more assertive, tolerant, protective, patient, etc. You can use the information to come up with creative ways to address future experiences with this person. There are so many possibilities, and so many ways forward instead of getting stuck in the thoughts and emotions about the experience.

Play with this concept next time you are given the gift of information from another person. Experiment with it and notice whether it makes a difference in the way you feel, the way you think, and the way you interact with others. You might learn all kinds of things about yourself and about the people in your life, and you might even sit back after a while and find yourself saying three more words that are equally important as you move through the world… “Isn’t that interesting?”