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ARTICLES
From The St Catharines Standard (Newspaper): Mr. Proactive; 'We change the world one person at a time' A couple years back, this was dropped into his e-mail inbox. It began rather innocently with a friendly "Hi" and a fairly innocuous statement: I was curious about what type of motivational speeches you deliver. But by the second paragraph, all the warm fuzzies were gone. The writer suggested an answer: Perhaps you speak about how you can lose for the NDP and then help make a mockery of a Liberal's campaign?? You're the kiss of death, when it comes to elections. How do you keep smiling? After a couple more uncomplimentary statements, the note ended with the observation: You're good for a few laughs though. Ted Mouradian paused inside his fourth-floor office in the Landmark Building on Church Street to consider a reply. He wasn't angry. Or defensive. Or even the least bit tempted by thoughts of scripting an equally scathing rebuttal. In fact, the real estate agent turned motivational speaker, father, grandfather and former political candidate, understood the writer. Mouradian had run as an NDP candidate in the 2004 federal election. A couple years after that, he encouraged his friends and supporters to cast a vote for the local Liberal candidate in an effort to keep the Conservatives out of power. He knew it was a controversial move. So, when that e-mail chimed into his account, he told himself what he'd been telling other people for years: be proactive, not reactive. The way he saw it, he had two choices. Delete it. Or write back. He hit the reply command. Advertisement The words that clicked from his fingertips were kind. Calm. Even, apologetic: Hi: Thanks for your input and comments. If you want to really get to know who I am and what I stand for, I would be happy to meet you for a coffee, or you could simply check out my website if you were truly interested in what I do for a living. I feel sad for you that you had to personalize this or that my actions upset you so much and for that I apologize. But, like you, I must stand up for what I believe ... Blessings to you and your family. Ted Then something happened. The person wrote back. Nicely. And even HE apologized: Your reply has made me realize how ignorant my comments were. Please accept my apology and all the best to you. I can see just from this short exchange how effective you are at helping people. This will hopefully change the way I deal with my opinions and approach to differing attitudes. Thanks for shaking me up. God Bless you as well. Unexpected to most. Not surprising to Mouradian. For years, he'd been describing moments exactly like this in the motivational seminars he delivers to companies and organizations across Canada and beyond. His passion is to help people manage stress and conflict in personal and professional lives. Here's the thing. Lurking the world, there are people whom Mouradian calls two-per-centers. They represent a small percentage of the population, but run everything. They are the reason rules are made. Unnecessary rules that, because of a few, everyone is obligated to obey. They hurt people. They're destructive to relationships. They think they're right all the time. They never say sorry because they're never at fault. They need to be in control. All the time. They're the reason cellphones are banned in some schools. Not because MOST students abuse the use of cellphones, but because A FEW students do. They're the few who complain about everything at work, even after people go to extremes to accommodate them. They're never happy. Never grateful. They're the reason Internet privileges at work are restricted. Not because there is mass abuse. But because a couple people use it for the wrong reasons, so management censors it for everyone. A few years back, Mouradian arrived to pick up one of his daughters from school and discovered she was delayed because the whole class was serving a detention. He knocked on the teacher's door and asked what had happened. Did Brodi do anything wrong? he wondered. No, said the teacher. There were only a couple troublemakers. But she felt by having the whole class serve the detention, peer pressure would help to solve the problem. "She was punishing the whole class because two per cent screwed up," Mouradian says. He took his daughter to the principal's office. Explained what had happened. And left. When we feel controlled by two-per-centers, we feel resentful, he says. And that's not healthy for any relationship. But that's not all. Along with two-per-cent people, there are two-per-cent moments in everyone's life. They happen every day. Someone cuts us off in traffic. Writes us a nasty e-mail. And while we will likely never see them again, their rudeness consumes our brain space and spoils our day. None of this has to be. Why? Because we are all in control of our reactions, Mouradian says. People don't make us feel angry. They may pull us into their dance of conflict. But we allow ourselves to be angry and we choose to react with anger. We may even choose to perform a nasty little two-per-cent moment of our own, he says. "We let them run our lives," Mouradian says. Awhile back, he was in Ottawa giving a seminar when someone said he'd like a copy of Mouradian's book, but didn't have any money at that moment. Mouradian gave him a book, and asked that he send the money later. "You'd do that?" the man asked. "Why wouldn't I?" Mouradian said. Even if he'd been burned in the past by someone who didn't pay, he'd still make the same offer to someone new, he says. He wouldn't give the offender another book again. But he also wouldn't make a rule of not giving out books without first being paid simply because of a couple people. Think proactive, not reactive, he says. Accept control. Decide how to respond. And don't just go through life aimlessly reacting to other people's actions or bad things that happen. Case in point. The angry e-mailer. The typical knee-jerk reaction would be to retaliate. To be fueled by feelings of betrayal and hurt. Mouradian saw it a different way. He realized the guy genuinely thought he was right. And, yes, even entitled to his opinion. People should be able to do anything they want - allowed to be who they are - as long as they don't adversely affect someone else, he says. Mouradian figured the writer wasn't harming him. And while Mouradian didn't believe he was right, he believed the writer thought he was right. So, how to respond? "If you set your ego aside, you don't have to fight them," Mouradian says. Being nice probably caught him off guard. Made him drop his defences. Think about how he'd reacted. And ultimately, made him understand Mouradian a little better. "We change the world one person at a time," Mouradian says. He doesn't know the writer. But maybe one day the guy's having a barbecue with his friends when Mouradian's name comes up. Everyone is bashing him. Except this one guy, whom he'd decided to treat nicely. Maybe the guy tells his friends, "Yeah, I sent him an e-mail and he's not what we think he is." Put it this way: "You can call me anything you want and you can honestly believe you're right," Mouradian says. "But only I can accept whether or not I take it into my heart." Here's another example. A student walks into class and tells his teacher to F-off. Instead of reacting, the teacher chooses to ask the student: "What did I do to get you so angry you disrespected me. If I did something, I apologize." The teacher knows she did nothing wrong. But she keeps her ego out of the way, takes him aside and asks: "Are you OK? Did something happen at home?" She is just the recipient. She doesn't know what happened to him before he walked into her classroom. Consider this: "I can exacerbate the situation or I can stay in control," Mouradian says. By keeping control, the student gets a new respect for the teacher and himself. But if it happens again, there will be consequences. Sometimes all people need is for their feelings to be validated, he says. For someone to acknowledge they have a right to feel how they feel. Likewise, don't let two-per-cent moments ruin your day. Someone might conclude they're having a really bad day after five awful events happen to them. Keep perspective, Mouradian says. Five events in a day filled with thousands of other events is actually pretty good. "I don't know why as human beings we focus on the dark side," he says, laughing. He travels a lot as a speaker. One time, he was in an airport when the plane was delayed because there was a problem with the airplane. He listened to commuters around him complain. Mouradian thought to himself: "Well, thank you for finding it BEFORE the plane took off." Last year, he had open-heart surgery. It has motivated him to walk more and eat better, but it didn't consume him. "Instead of having that define me," he says, "it just becomes a part of me. "It doesn't become my life. "It's not what happens to me, it's what I do about it." Imagine life as a river. The two-per-centers are yelling and pushing, upset because it's not flowing in their direction. They're angry at the river. Angry at life. Angry at where it is taking them. Others feel like they're drowning. The river is unnavigable. "The river of life is swallowing them up," he says. They don't understand they just need to swim to shore or ask for help. "If they could just stop thrashing and panicking and realize the river isn't that deep," he says. "They just need to put their hand up and ask for help." The last bunch are proactive. They remember where the curves and rocks are in the river and prepare themselves. They also realize that every day there will be new rocks, new curves. "We want a perfect day. We want our trip down the river of life to be perfect and it isn't. "The rapids and rocks keep moving." But they don't give up. They don't get overwhelmed. They tell people what they need and assure themselves, "I'm in charge of my journey. "I'm in charge of me. "No matter how turbulent the river gets, I'm still in charge of how I respond." More information For more information on Ted Mouradian and the Mouradian Group, visit www.cooperativeaction.com or call 905-682-7380 or 1-877-393-3433.
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