Seeing Colleagues Anew

At the small office where I work I was not being treated with respect and began to feel very downtrodden and depressed.  I really had to use the messages in the Lesson-Sermon each day to help me out when things kept going wrong and the blame was falsely put onto me.  However, outside the office everyone thought of me as a very competent person, and I saw this as the evidence of God’s encouragement in a tangible way.

One day I was having a moan to a longstanding friend who is also a Christian Scientist.  I said that in the office she wouldn’t recognise me as the “me” she knows.  So she said, “Well, why don’t you BE you?”

This thought really stayed with me.  The office was closed for a long period over Christmas, and so with my friend’s words ringing in my ears I decided to return to being “me” when starting work in January.  I went into that office with an air of authority, fearlessness and joy.  I didn’t have to “rattle my cage” and say what I thought about things, but I could see in my colleagues’ eyes that everyone was looking at me in a new light -- as if I was a new person.

To me this was an incredible experience.  In chatting with my boss I discovered he was experiencing great difficulties which helped me to understand his reactions better.  I found it incredible that by changing my own thinking (which is of course all one has to do in any case) the previous unhappy situation changed, and is still continuing to be good and happy.