Are you off-ended?

The scourge of offence. The only person who doesn’t have to deal with it is the one who doesn’t have to relate with people on a regular basis. Whether a leader likes it or not, he will have to confront it perhaps more frequently than others. Unfortunately, it is one thing that if not properly handled, can derail the best of leaders.

Offense can be defined as a trap or grip of emotions designed primarily to upset or derail its victim emotionally and consequently prevent or delay a desired end (off-end). It is an external stimulus whose power is only as strong as our internal response to it.

Sometimes, offences can slowly creep into our lives in a way that, if care is not taken, can override our better judgment of issues and send us on an emotional rollercoaster. Offences are usually triggered by a response of our emotions to two principal external stimuli; people and circumstances.

Every organization has its fair share of wet-blanket individuals who seem to have no other preoccupation except causing disaffection and spreading rumours within the organization. Left unchecked, such situations can depress the best of leaders. It is not a pleasant experience to suffer rejection from people you think very highly of. But it is a reality of life. If you think that is not serious enough, how do you handle false accusations leveled against you on issues you know nothing about? Yet, your accusers are very strident in their claims while you look on with no defence or witness to your innocence.

Sometimes, our emotions are messed up by circumstances that we believe are out of our control. Government policies can catch us off-guard and set our enterprise or organization on what appears to be a downward spiral. Business gone awry. Socio-economic situations that leave us forlorn and feeling worsted. These are all possible reasons for offence.

When we are offended, a chain of events like discouragement and frustration which can sometimes be overwhelming and lead to depression, is triggered. This could result in misdirected anger and misplaced aggression that make us take out our anger on other people who may have absolutely nothing to do with the reason for our messed up emotions!

Unfortunately, while we think that others are the cause of our internal upheaval, they are merely triggers for the volcano we did not know was seething in the innermost recesses of our being! Our response to the triggers are simply God’s way of revealing what lies within us to us! Life is more about what happens IN us than what happens TO us.

Simply put, offences are empowered or otherwise by our response to them. Whether we know it or not, people will from time to time get on our nerves. Things will not always go the way we plan and people will not always do what we want them to do. That is the reality of life. Offences are therefore a part of our maturity training schedule. The problem is not the source of the offence. The real challenge is with our own emotions.

Whether the offence is deliberate or inadvertent, the goal is the same – emotional derailment which in turn can impair effectiveness and productivity.

How do you checkmate offences before they cause your emotions to spiral out of control?

The first thing is to recognize that you have no control over other people’s actions. You can only control your own responses. When you are offended, the spotlight is really on you, not on the offender.

Learn to protect your emotions. My definition of emotion is “energy in motion”. The movement could be backwards or forward. Channel your energies in the direction of things that add value to you, not the things that take your eyes off your goal. Never take attacks on your personality or rejection personally. More often than not, when you allow yourself to personalize offences, you will internalize the anger and externalize the aggression.

Third, make up your mind to love people regardless of their conduct. Those who betray your trust and confidence merely help you to draw necessary boundaries in the relationship. They are not your enemies. They are your teachers. There are some life lessons you may never learn if they didn’t do what they did to you! I learnt tolerance and what the Bible calls longsuffering through serial acts of betrayal of my trust! One lesson I learnt the hard way is that you yourself are not free until you let go of both the offence and the offender.

When you genuinely love people, you hardly set expectations for them. And when you do, you are hardly disappointed when they fall short of those expectations. Where possible, confront the people who are causing the problem and let them know how upsetting their actions are to you and perhaps the organization. If their presence in your life or organization will continually put everyone else in harm’s way, it is sometimes better to simply keep them at arm’s length or disengage them from the organization. But whatever you do, hold no grudge against them. Not because of them but because of you!

The best people in our lives usually come in unannounced. This is why we must never shut the door of our heart against people because of another person’s dysfunction. Visiting the errors of someone on others is treating them unfairly and missing the opportunity to benefit from whatever capacities they embody for your advantage.

Recognize crisis as an alert system that opens your eyes to certain deficiencies in your personality or your organization. Very often, these things may have to do with your relational ethos or the dynamics of your operations. So instead of throwing a fit of outrage when the offence triggers come, pause and, as we say in popular parlance, “Calm down” and do not take any decisions in the heat of your anger. Decisions taken in such situations are usually regretted later. Provocation is a learning curve. Until you learn the lessons in the experience, you may never live above it!

In the midst of it all, learn to wear a smile. It may be tough but it is a strategy which, when mastered, helps you to process things faster and better. Life is far too short to waste your energies on issues that will not advance your original purpose.

On a final note, forgive easily. Let go of the anger and bitterness even before the offender apologizes. This is why the word ‘forgive’ can also be rendered ‘fore-give’. Bitterness coupled with an unforgiving spirit can be likened to someone drinking hemlock and expecting that another person would die from the effect. Several times, we wait for the offender to apologize and we then choose whether or not to accept the apology because we are still angry and bitter. Whatever happens, always remember that retaining offence is like shutting people up in a prison you created in your heart. Forgiveness is about opening the prison door only to realize that you were actually the prisoner all along!

And that is an expensive proposition!

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!