Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune. Great minds rise above them. 

Washington Irving

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Recently I came across someone who’d potentially plagiarised my work.

It came in the form of a newsletter from an acquaintance that I’ve known for some time. He gets my newsletter too, and we operate roughly in the same fields.

In his newsletter, he referenced some identifiable language and a concept that I’ve been writing and speaking about for the better part of a year. It’s unique enough to recognise as something that could easily be referenced back to me. Yet it wasn’t.

My first thought was to react by firing off a testy email letting him know that what he’d done wasn’t OK.

But before I did anything so rash, I did a couple of other things first:

1. I reflected. Maybe it was pure coincidence? Maybe he’d read my stuff and then forgotten about it, only for it to resurface later with him thinking that was his original stuff? Maybe I’ve done something like that in the past too?
2. I connected. I sent a WhatsApp voice message to a couple of trusted colleagues asking for their advice. 

Those two circuit breakers of reflecting and connecting changed the frame for me. I decided:

a) no idea of mine is truly original (thanks Seth Godin) 

b) I’m flattered that he might have been inspired by my work (thanks Colin Ellis); and 

c) it’s not worth the energy to pursue something that only might have been true (thanks Simon Dowling)

I chose graceful above grouchy.

And I got on with my day.

Where are you choosing grouchy when instead you could choose to be graceful?