I didn’t realize the dramatic paradigm shift this experience brought to me. It was a simple life experience. The change didn’t happen overnight, it was subtle. And now nearly four years later, I can see how thoughts influence and eventually change everything.
For the longest time in my adulthood, my thoughts remained primarily extroverted.
It’s interesting how perspectives affect our lives.
I woke up at 7am smiling from ear to ear. Because today was haircut day! To the uninitiated, barber competition is rife in Japan. So many barber’s try to add as much value to the experience as possible. My barber also trims eyebrows, and even clean my ears and gives a massage. It’s an experience one must try when coming to Japan.
So with purpose, I started the coffee maker, quickly made a fried egg with a couple hotdogs and toasted an English muffin. Coffee was finished by the time I finished cooking… my schedule was so far humming along according to plan. After finishing breakfast, I started sorting through the receipts I accumulated this past couple years. Sorting out the keepers and trash. Keeping my eye on the clock to make sure I left home by 10:45am, because I didn’t want to be late for my appointment at 11am.
I arrived promptly at 10:55am and I smiled broadly as I entered. The barber looked quizzically at me and said with a stern but sincere tone “since you didn’t come at 10am, the next opening is from 2pm”. I felt a rush of anger, but quickly put it in check. I stared blankly at the barber and mumbled an apology and quickly made another appointment at 11am for the following day and left – confused.
After leaving I thought, maybe he didn’t understand my non-native Japanese pronunciation. Or, I had a moment of mental weakness and said “10am” instead of “11am”, but every time I reenacted the conversation I had with my barber, one week prior in my head:
Me “Are you open on December 26th?”Barber “Yes we are!”Me “OK, what time do you open?”Barber “10am.”Me “Can I come at 11am?”Barber “OK, no problem.”Me “See you next week on Dec 26 at 11am”Barber “OK, see you then”
I couldn’t understand how there could possibly be any misunderstanding.
Then it dawned on me that my barber was the kind of person who always tries to go out of his way to give good customer service, by remembering his customers name, interests, family issues and anything we talk about to personalize the customer experience and retain his customers. So when I asked what time he opened, his customer service oriented mind was probably setting the date and time, because it’s rude to ask twice.
So this led me to realize how important the sequence of questions and requests or confirming with visual cues actually are in communication. If my first question was for an appointment at 11am, or if I would have given a visual cue by pointing at my calendar, I probably would have enjoyed my haircut today.