Today, as I was leaving the office, a colleague comes up and says to me, “The mission planning system is not working.”  Now, he had known this since 9:00 AM this morning, and had told someone else, but I had no idea.  Of course, the mission planning system is one of my responsibilities, and because I am “attached,”  I felt that I had to fix it.  Immediately.

How can we tell if we are over attached to a situation? By our reaction to it.  If bad news alters our emotional state, we are attached.

If instead, we think, “isn’t that interesting,” then we are not attached.

You see, if our caveman brain immediately reacts in a fight or flight situation, we are attached.  To become dis-attached is to stop, take note, make a decision, and move on.  We learn what we can, and we move on.

Seth Godin writes in “Linchpin:” When our responses turn into reactions and we set out to teach people a lesson, we lose.  We lose, because the act of teaching someone a lesson, rarely succeeds at changing them, and always fails at making our day better, or our work more useful.