A friend told me a story recently that made me feel incredibly proud.

Irene cares for an elderly woman and last week, she explained to Mrs C that she would no longer attend at night because Mrs C’s children had varied the contract.

Mrs C heard something entirely different. She heard that her children had cancelled the contract altogether. Mrs C became upset, called them and demanded to know why they had cancelled Irene.

Irene tried to explain. “I didn’t say cancelled. I said varied.”

But by then, they were stuck in that familiar place where communication stops being about understanding and starts becoming about proving who said what.

Back and forth, they went. 

Until Irene said: “I must not have explained it properly.”

And that was it. The argument ended as quickly as it had begun. Irene didn’t admit to being wrong. She didn’t have to. But she stopped trying to prove that she was right.  

What she did was to take responsibility for the fact that her message had not been received as she intended.

As the creator of The HACKS Code, I felt a little like a proud mother hearing that story. Humility is the first principle of The HACKS Code, and I had just seen it in action. 

Stop defending your intention and start acknowledging the other person’s experience. That is Humility. The magic happens when you get out of the way of your ego. When has your ego recently got in the way?

My book The HACKS Code is launching soon. If you’d like to be notified when it goes live, use this link: https://form.jotform.com/262174293680057