When I started working as a coach, I had the chance to have a supervisor known world-wide for his intellectual and human qualities. His name was Carlo Moïso (1945-2008). Moïso developed some very powerful concepts, which I propose to describe in next month’s articles. Among them is the “5 U’s” concept, which has a major impact on our professional and personal lives.

This month I shall start with the first “U”: life’s Unfairness.

Carlo used to say that, whether we like it or not, unfairness exists in our lives. A wise man should actively accept unfairness, which is inherent in life, instead of wasting his energy to fight it. He should accept that which he cannot control, he should avoid useless resentment and act in the here and now, targeting events on which he can have a real impact.

The uselessness of revenge

Dan Ariely(1) gives us an example of the uselessness of our fight against life’s unfairness. One day he lost control of the brand new car he was driving, because the car was not responding properly. As a result, he almost died. Luckily, he pulled through and, in a state of shock, he called the automobile company to report the car’s hidden defect and ask for assistance. To his astonishment and anger, he was told by the company that the car had no such defect, that the accident was therefore his own fault or else that he had made it up and that any assistance, repair or replacement of the vehicle was out of the question. Given the situation, he had two choices: sue the automobile company, a long and risky procedure with an uncertain outcome, or have the car repaired as soon as possible and move forward.

The uselessness of regrets and resentment

In addition to the desire for revenge, the sense of unfairness can generate another harmful consequence: regrets and resentment. This often happens when some external event hinders or disrupts our expectations and causes us to waste a large part of our psychic energy in useless recriminations, such as: “if he hadn’t done this, I could have succeeded in…”; “if this hadn’t happened, I could have become…”.

Desire for vengeance, regrets, resentment, brooding: our sense of unfairness leads us to harbor these feelings at certain moments of our lives. It is only afterwards that we realize that these reactions are not only a waste of time and energy, but also add to our malaise and do not lead to a positive outcome.

The outside culprit shortcut and the three attitudes vis-à-vis unfairness

Irvin Yalom(2), one of the most important representatives of existential psychiatry in the United States, as well as an acclaimed author of several novels, wrote that, rather than admitting their responsibility in a particular event, men have a tendency to look for an outside culprit. Similarly, they perceive unfairness as an external element. Obviously, as in Dan Ariely’s accident, a negative experience may be due to bad luck. Yet it is our attitude vis-à-vis this kind of event that determines our destiny.

We are fully responsible for the choice of our reactions:

• Be victims, crushed by events
• Be executioners, looking desperately for revenge and punishment
• Be masters of our own life

The last attitude is indeed the most difficult to adopt, since it forces us to look realistically at the situation, with responsibility and awareness of the control we can exercise on our life. This will enable us to consider every experience as a learning process and an opportunity to move forward.

The three different attitudes at work

Let us consider a typical example of life’s unfairness: someone whom we consider less capable than ourselves is promoted. When we learn about it, after a perfectly normal and healthy feeling of disappointment, we face several choices:

• Become a victim and complain (“poor little me!”). This attitude will not get us a promotion; on the contrary, it will eventually tarnish our image.
• Become an executioner: seek revenge on the person who was promoted or those who promoted him/her by belittling their competence, putting a spoke in their wheels. This will not make us any happier nor will it get us a promotion. On the contrary, it will probably make us look unreliable and possibly dangerous in the workplace.
• Act properly: face the situation with courage and open-mindedness, and finally ask ourselves if we are not partly responsible (even by a mere 1%) for a situation that we perceive as unfair and undeserved. It is essential that we assume our part of responsibility in order to become masters our own life. If we have, even partially, been the cause of a particular situation, we also have the power to change it. We can then look at our future (with reference to this or that job or this or that company) with a sense of responsibility and the power to act.

Conclusion

We adopt these three natural attitudes at different times. The route of responsibility and action is of course the hardest one to pursue.

Nevertheless, according to Carlo Moïso, the difference between a happy man and an unhappy one is that the happy man quickly understands that he is wasting his energy when he falls into one of the “U” traps, such as the unfairness trap, and consequently he wills himself to change attitude and act responsibly.