3 Sides of a True Story

As the title indicates, there are actually three sides to any story or situation which you may encounter. There is your side of the story, the other or the opponent's side and then there is the truth which may at times fall right down the middle. There may be times the truth falls very far away from the other previously mentioned sides. In many instances, your side of the truth may just be how you perceived the situation under specific circumstances, and should those circumstances change will the truth or more accurately your version of the truth change as well?


Here's how it could work...Two guys chatting with each other, one has an ipod and during the first conversation the guy with the ipod asks the second guy to upload some music to it. Let us call the guy with the ipod Malcom. Therefore the guy without the ipod obliged Malcom and took some of his music and put it onto the ipod. However during this transaction - the 2nd guy wondered why the ipod had a different name, that is, it didn't appear under the register as Malcom. The circumstance used at the time was that the ipod's name was an alias and that Malcom wanted to expand his collection of music. This is one side of the story...which also appears under those circumstances to be the truth.

On the second attempt to update the ipod Malcom was asked if he had a computer, to which he answered "no". In this case the other guy again asked how was music added to the ipod in the first case, and herein Malcom side stepped the direct question and suggested that the person who placed music on the device didn't follow his specific instructions. This sparked the individual who Malcom approached to think that something was up and that this was a story with one side, and another signal was "body language." It may be noted that Malcom in this instance was trying hard to move his perception of the truth(one side) over to the middle ground to convince all and sundry.

The other side of the perceived truth may be that, indeed Malcom is a nervous personality and he did ask a friend to place some music onto the ipod, it is just the unknown part of the formula. What do you do in this case? There is something called your gut/or your 6th sense, which persons have that signals something underneath the superficial persona, that you just can' t put your hand on.

More and more - persons can consider this to be like a one-dollar coin. There are two sides of the coin and then there is the edge, which is right down the middle. We should aim for that middle line as hurtful as it may be or as unpopular as it looks. However in business, and good business at that, you should be very careful when dealing with a client and not highlighting the truth since it can again damage your reputation. A damaged reputation is harder to build from, and you need to have a solid foundation in order to have a skyscraper.

Keep your untruths to a minimum...