Have you ever been treated unfairly?
Did someone more powerful than you blow off your concerns?
Have you felt powerless to “get justice”?
Has your powerlessness made you so angry you wanted to scream, or better yet, take revenge?
Barb has definitely found her yippee. She’s in love with her career as CEO of a very cute children’s clothing line. Moms love Barb’s clothes because they stand up to washing after washing. Well, until recently. A couple of months ago, Barb was up to her eyeballs in complaints from retailers and wholesalers because of fabric defects. Entire orders were being sent back and her faithful customers were refusing to re-order. She felt like she was spiraling into disaster.
Help!!
In pretty short order, Barb had identified the crux of the problem. She called the company that produces her raw material and told them what was happening. She was sure they would “make it right.”
But her supplier, who is bigger, richer and has a lot more resources than she does, was not interested. They blew her off. Not only did they not make it right, they offered no solutions or compensation or anything. At all.
This was so NOT yippee. Luckily, Barb had choices:
- She could feel powerless and small and decide the world was unfair.
- She could let her anger drive her to revenge and find a way to make them pay.
- She could create a solution to the problem so her customers could get the quality baby clothes they’d come to expect.
Which one feels yippee to you?
It might seem simple when you see it on the page. Of course, door number THREE is how you find your yippee again. But when faced with a big fat injustice, it’s not as easy as it looks to take the yippee option. Powerlessness and anger are BIG thieves of our yippee. And it’s easy to trap ourselves into wallowing or trying to extract justice rather than taking action.
It’s OK to stomp your foot, hit a pillow and yell in a closed room. Whatever it takes to express your anger and frustration. Get it out! Then get clear and channel that energy like Barb did.
She spent a few days researching new suppliers, seeking alternative financing for her inventory and creating a customer service initiative to keep her customers loyal. That’s where she put her energy and emotion.
She stayed away from her old supplier and delegated (a GREAT yippee word) the responsibility of negotiating a settlement to her attorney. In essence, she didn’t let her anger drive her action.
Sometimes focusing on emotion is so yippee. But not when you feel powerless. You have three choices when you feel powerless: give in and wallow, get angry and try to get even, or create an action plan to get back to your yippee. And since your yippee is the most important of the three, try as best you can to take action.
Because this can be SO hard to do, we need stories about times YOU got out of feeling powerless by taking action. Did you quit a job, hire a new person, fire an ex-boyfriend? Tell us everything so we can get inspired to find solutions too! How did you get back to YOUR yippee???
Can’t wait to hear from you. Until next Tuesday, Yippee!
Elizabeth
I left a job in order to find my Yippee. I was being asked to act in ways that were incongruent with my values. Instead of staying to fight the system, I took a one year hiatus from work, traveled a lot, and ultimately found a new career and profession.
You made the smart, healthy, yippee move. A values mismatch is a red flag. Congratulations on spotting it.