How do you know if you smell?

Have you ever had the experience of realising too late that the garlic you had last night is pouring out of your pores into the noses of your friends or workmates?

What about the classic question - pooh! who stepped in something? Only to realise when you check your shoes who it was.

One of the greatest difficulties in life can be to get the right perspective especially about yourself.  Because just as you can smell something and assume it is coming from someone else or you can smell of something without being aware of it yourself sometimes in relationships we can be off.

For instance, how do you know if you are a genius and have an idea that no-one else can see the merits in or are a fool and have an idea there are no merits in?  When you have a conflict with someone is it them or you that is the cause?  It is so easy to assume we are right.  For some of us our default position is to think we are right.  Unfortunately, sometimes there is a fault with our default and it is actually our fault.
For me, my default position is that I am right.  I cannot really help it, it's the default I have.  I do need to be aware of it though and make sure I can get a perspective to see myself in the right light.

Jesus talked about this tendency to see other people's problems before our own when he said "Don't judge", "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"  In other words, maybe you have the problem.

So, how do you know if you are at fault or the other person?  Well here are a few clues from my own experience;

1. When it's everyone else, it's you - If you are running into several idiots a day and not being understood by any of them... oops!
2. Get a third person's view - If in doubt, take feedback, just make a pact with yourself not to shoot the messenger if you hear what you don't want to.
3. Use a mirror - The Bible can be like a mirror.  Looking into what God reveals in the words of the Bible is of value to us if we do it.  If you genuinely read the Bible to follow what it says, it is hard to keep the planks (or be concerned about the sawdust actually). 

Ultimately you can still have the Garlic problem, where you don't even know you smell and no amount of huffing into your hand can help you to smell it because you are already desensitised.  What you must realise in that case is what goes in, must come out.

Just like garlic, what we feed ourselves a diet of - in thoughts and desires and influences - will eventually come out of us, even without trying.

Smell you later.