You are not my adversary.

A few months ago I had to do a team building exercise with a few of my co-workers. For the exercise, we were told that one of us had been randomly selected to sabotage the group project we were going to try to complete. We were simply given instructions to complete the group project and identify the saboteur before they had successfully removed other members to win.

As the game played out, one by one, myself and other co-workers were either accused of being the saboteur or unsuccessfully identified the saboteur and were removed from the game. Eventually everyone besides two people were left - we had lost the game because we had not identified that person. But here was the kicker, neither of the final two players were the saboteur either. We discovered that the team building guide was the saboteur. We were set-up from the beginning to believe that we were not all out for the common good and because of this assumption we turned on each other. We failed.

'What if we are not in competition with the people around us?' - Donald Miller

How do we view our co-workers, our friends, our neighbors, that local developer, etc. when their approach differs from our own? If I'm honest it's very easy for me to make someone out to be an adversary or competition - because for better or worse, I believe myself to be in the 'right' most of the time.

But the reality is we have more allies than true enemies in this life. The vast majority of the world is not attempting to sabotage us.We allow fear to take hold. We don't like to admit this so it is often is easier to see it on display on a larger scale - within communities or in political parties. In those cases we don't have to look very far to  acknowledge it but the reality is that those examples are simply outpourings of the individuals within. They are outpourings of us and our fear.So we believe our co-workers are out to get us or don't have the best interest of the company in mind. We believe friends or loved ones are just trying to manipulate us or deceive us. More often than not this is simply not true and the failure wasn't the other or ourselves but a lack of clear, understood communication.

What might your next shift at work look like or school day be like if you looked at others, believing they were working for the same goal?

How might your relationships change if you entered into them with trust rather than fear?