Matthew Ferry's Blog

I got an email from one of my clients who said, “Do I have to take responsibility for every experience that I am having in my life?” And the answer is yes. And it’s not that you have to take responsibility for every thing that occurs, it’s that you need to take responsibility for your experience in life. And your experience is the way in which that you’re dealing with it. It’s how it feels to you.

So, nothing outside of you determines the way that you feel. You, shifting your context, and looking at it from a different way instantaneously gives you relief.

So, the client is a real estate agent, and she is selling a house. The owner suddenly goes crazy when the buyer sends a request back and questions some of the work that they are doing on the house. And so the seller just went nuts, saying, “Who are they?” and “We did it,” and so on. And the seller started yelling, swearing and carrying on, and my client’s like, “What did I do wrong?” and “Oh, my God!”

And I said, “Whoa. You gotta back up and you need to look at it from a different context. This seller just wants to sell her house, and she doesn’t deal well with confrontation, so when someone questions whether she did something or not, her response is the response of a 3-year-old. Right? She screams and yells and throws a temper tantrum. And your job is to just go there with her and say “I know! I can’t believe it!” and get on her side, completely. Be completely and totally in appreciation and honor her 3-year-old style, and see what happens then.

So the first step is to recognize that it’s not you. The other person is having a response. And then the second way to control that experience is to honor and appreciate it. You can, literally, be exactly the same way that that person is, and honor their style. Try that life coaching. You can become the creator of your own experience and not be a victim of your circumstances. See what happens.