Making adjustments

This is a concept that has both serious as well as humorous connotations. Here I am addressing the serious aspect of making adjustments.

In life we humans have to make scores of adjustments. Some of us do them willingly, others with some reservations, still others with good grace and a few hopping mad at the need.

Here are some common ones

• Spouses making adjustments to each other. A long drawn out process needing patience on both sides and at least some affection for each other, if not love!
• Parents making adjustments to children. Depending up on the kind of family the onus of this responsibility is decided; most cases mothers make the greater number of adjustments, fathers few.
• Children adjusting to parents; bearing with their expectations, anxiety, demands and their suspiciousness, all have to be accommodated.
• Adjusting with ‘friends’. The special inverted commas are meant to indicate that we tend to have a large category of them, and each group needs different kind of adjustments!
• Adjusting to colleagues in offices; a very tricky one this is. Many times this is the hardest thing to do because we don’t care for them and they don’t care for us, but we are stuck with each other for long number of years and are required to somehow ‘get along’!
• Adjusting to bosses! The most difficult one this is. If we have succeeded in this, all others seem so much more easier.

Common adjustment problems

• Communication ; talking at each other rather than talking to each other , poor listening skills
• Working together; arriving at how to do things, keeping pace with each other, having issues on how to do things
• Sharing responsibility; usually one person takes the load, the other very nicely pretends!
• Sharing credit; here too one pushy character hogs the limelight and the others are mute spectators
• Time ; when to start, when to finish, at what time to get to work etc are critical issues
• Sharing information; often happens with ‘friends’. Breaking faith, using information and trying to control the person are all possible!

What to do to be good at adjustments

• Since most life activities require adjustments, keep the perennial trouble maker, your EGO aside. This is the greatest interfering entity for any adjustment
• Be a good listener; only through listening it is possible to know what the other person actually wants to convey and how both can move ahead
• Polish speaking respectfully; most adjustment problems come because we tend to say things using wrong phrases,, tone and improper emphasis on words. Many a relationship adjustment breaks due to this human failing.
• Take responsibility for action in things that can be done; be willing to assist in things that are difficult. Shirking responsibility is one of the most common human failing that breaks adjustments
• Be willing to share work as well as failures. Give credit to others too, and defend others when staring at a failure. Nothing is achieved by taking all credit for good outcomes and shifting blame on to others when things fail.
• Have patience; this is the most difficult virtue to develop, but the most crucial one if we need to make good adjustments. Elders, seniors, parents, bosses must develop this, because, youngsters, juniors, children and subordinates hold lesser responsibility for making things work in any situation. The former are blamed not the latter if things fail. The only relationship where equal blame for poor adjustments can be attributed is the spousal relationship.
• Time is the most critical resource we humans have and we are the only creatures who know how to adjust time! Use this human ability every time we need to work with others, work on multiple tasks, or have deadlines staring at us.
• Having integrity, keeping faith, trust and being dependable are all virtues to be cultivated for good adjustments with ‘friends’
• More than all this, respect the others point of view in a conflicting situation; no one is right, everyone sees the situation from their perspective. A teacher sees the student as neglectful and careless and the student sees the teacher as too demanding and callous. A boss sees the subordinate as irresponsible and the sub ordinate invariably sees the boss as irrational and demanding. Similar things happen between parents and children, in spousal relationships, among colleagues and friends!

Adjustments are everyday tasks that we all must carry as a load on our minds, cannot afford to off load them. We adjust and adjust, but still die thinking probably we must have tried harder.

Lots can be said on each of the above aspects of adjustments, but for the time, happy adjustments to you all. Present human relationship issues.