"Don't shoot the messenger"It has been recognized since the time of ancient Greece that people have a tendency to react badly to a person who delivers bad news, especially when the person who actually caused the unwanted event is not accessible or when the calamity is a natural occurrence.
While "shooting the messenger" is an automatic response, it causes needless suffering, arguments, and broken relationships.
Affirmation: "I will be conscious never to 'shoot the messenger.'"
As an example of "shooting the messenger," recently a subscriber of Daily Inspiration email reported that after several months of finding benefit from my daily messages, the emails had suddenly stopped arriving. After running through my standard troubleshooting checklist, I escalated the issue to my mailer GetResponse. They discovered that the subscriber, apparently accidentally, had clicked the "Spam" button in her email reader for one of our emails, which caused GetResponse to follow their legal obligation to add her email address to their "blacklist." GetResponse requested that I ask her to send them an email stating that she wanted to receive emails from me again so they could legally remove the "blacklist" block on sending email to her address. Was she happy to have an easy resolution for her problem? No, her reaction was to "shoot the messenger" by angrily asserting that she had NOT clicked the Spam button, and that she would have no use for further Daily Inspiration emails.
This also reminds me of the old saying, "Biting off your nose to spite your face," which also causes much unnecessary suffering.
Further reading: Aesop: The Fox and the Grapes
Is today the day to find joy?
Lao Tzu: He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.
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