Side note: noticed that her uncle viewed my profile on LinkedIn and that we were not connected. I'm pretty sure that we were at one point and I'll be honest - I was immediately angered. How petty and childish?!? Who told him?!? What are they saying about me??? All that went through my head in about 5 seconds. On the sixth second I asked myself what I was feeling (shame, anger, bitterness, a sense of being treated unfairly) and at about the 10th second I said that these were my feelings that I controlled, that we may have never been connected in the first place, and, even if we were, it says more about him than it does about me. Back to the five seconds, that was the "bad" me, thinking about defriending/unfollowing/unlinking/etc. all of them before I calmed myself down. Point is: it takes time and seems counterintuitive but detaching is making me a happier person. It does require deliberate action, though.
^^^^^^^^^^^
THIS is everything. Those 10 seconds, and how you handle them, are what it's all about. I don't think there is any more valuable lesson to learn from these situations. I love that you posted this.
Emotional awareness is just like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the more it grows.
