ShareEventually, when it turned out otherwise, I remembered my mantra, resugram which means “I shall rise again” and moved on. Today, I am bubbling with life and the sky is just the beginning for me. So, for those that currently suffer rejection like I did during my wilderness experience, you must realise that rejection can, often times, turn out a good outcome if you can identify the gains in that pain and summon up courage to pick up the pieces of your life.

This experience formed the basis of my subsequent openness to people in all facets of life and has further helped strengthened my belief in the maxim that says “quid sera sera,” meaning whatever will be, will be.

It has also made me, over the years, to have tremendous respect for people who are open, honest and direct in expressing their thoughts, feelings, and desires. This is a very rare character trait and it always makes people stand out in a positive way. To be blunt, it impresses the hell out of me whenever I see it.

As a very active and busy person, I simply do not have time for people who beat around the bush and fail to state plainly what they want, even though it’s obvious they want something. Unfortunately, I have had to deal with quite a bit of this in my career path. When people are vague and indirect about expressing their thoughts, feelings and desires usually because they are afraid of rejection, it is a huge turn-off.

They simply don’t create the conditions where I can feel good about acceding to his or her request. I readily admit that I am not particularly well-versed in the culture of playing manipulative social games. I simply have no stomach for it, so I prefer to opt out whenever it comes to such. Even when a man is getting flirtatious with me, I have a hard time reading his intentions. I wouldn’t know if he is genuinely interested or if he is baiting me into giving him an undeserved attention or if it is just his natural, playful style.

For a romantic person like me, flirting can certainly be fun and I occasionally enjoy it, but only as a game to be played rather than as a good way to develop a real connection with me. For all I care, it could be something else entirely.

Another problem is when people try to connect under false pretences, offering up one motive for meeting and later performing a bait and switch. This practice immediately drops respect for such people to absolute zero. For me, I quickly delete such a person from my memory. I have no tolerance for deception and manipulation. I can tell you that openness or directness can be very classy and beautiful, whether in relationships, business or other social situations.

Please take note, however, that directness doesn’t mean being pushy or annoying. It means that you are simply open and honest in sharing your thoughts, feelings and intentions with others. It doesn’t mean you browbeat people to get what you want, but once you voice your desires, you must give the other person the freedom to accept or reject what you are offering.

My experience is that directness is almost always well-received. Sometimes, people are a little surprised at first, simply because it is so rare, but they also find it refreshingly different. They may pause for a moment to process what you say, but then the conversation quickly moves forward in a delightful way. I recommend that you think of directness as a conversational awareness boost in your relationships. Once you enjoy a taste of directness in your relationships, it’s hard to settle for anything less.

When I started these series a few weeks ago, I started getting a lot more emails, especially from men, commending my courage for making my private lifestyle publicly known. Some of the emails were very flirtatious but I dare say, I have been unable to read anything into them.

For any individual man, I can’t tell if he is just being friendly and playful or he is trying to open a dialogue because he is interested in becoming my friend or acquaintance or perhaps he is just baiting and teasing me to see how I would react.  In spite of these, I still love getting to know new people, so I’m not bothered at all when people initiate contact with me and suggest that we might become good friends.

Most of the friendships I enjoy today were initiated by other people. They got to know me from my days in the corporate world or from my professional and social associations and having seen that we had a lot in common, had reached out to connect with me. If they had not done this, I might never have known of their existence, and I’d have been denied the gift of their friendship.

Even my relationship with Dipo only happened because he initiated contact with me. What if he held back and talked himself out of the idea?

Let me, therefore, hang my pen here with an appeal that if you want to cultivate deep, connected relationships, please, skip the drama and start things off the right way, that is, with openness, honesty, and directness. You’ll be amazed at just how refreshing it can be. Share