1-The POWER to CHOOSE

I don't consider myself an optimist. I tend to analyze peoples motivations, actions and words from a negative perspective. I ponder slights and hurts for far too long. All of this impacts my capacity for JOY each and every moment of each and every day. I want to change that. Life is finite and once a minute, an hour, a day is spent it is irretrievable. Therefore, I must CHOOSE to see the good (or overlook the negative), I must CHOOSE to overlook a slight. I need a change in perspective.

I know this is going to be hard for me...

On Tuesday morning my boss sprang an unplanned meeting on me. We were having out of town guests and needed to extend our meeting room reservation and have lunch delivered. This was at 9:20am. He wouldn't know a lunch headcount until later that morning and wanted Delivery from a local deli that was usually less than cooperative with deliveries and late orders (and I was heading out to another meeting). I CHOOSE to just ACCEPT these circumstances. I didn't focus on the lack of planning, the inconvenience this created for me or the insensitivity of my boss. Just making that choice was so freeing. I didn't stew about it and lose precious minutes in justifiable indignation. I was astounded that simply making the CHOICE to ACCEPT the situation had such a profound outlook on my entire attitude and the rest of my day. The success of this certainly made me look forward to the next "opportunity" to exercise my POWER to CHOOSE.

As you can imagine, it didn't take long for the next opportunity to present itself. The very next morning as I was driving to work, traffic began to back up doe to slow moving road machinery. I get resentful when drivers don't practice proper driving etiquette, are just plain rude or put their need for speed above my safety. As drivers pulled out from behind only to swerve back in 2 cars ahead of me I sped up to close the gap to prevent other like minded drivers from doing the same. Then I remembered my POWER to CHOOSE resolution, felt chagrined and vowed to refrain from such practices in the future. Could that choice impact my overall outlook and increase my daily JOY?

At home that same evening I was talking about Track practice with my husband, Gary (I help coach the field events of Javelin, Discus and Shot-put for middle school-ers). This particular evening several of the team members were less than motivated to practice. They literally dragged their feet and laid on the field, had to make numerous restroom breaks, refused to sprint and were generally uncooperative. I would have normally complained and maligned the kids for their behavior, sucking the JOY out of the few minutes a husband and wife had together preparing dinner. I chose to make the comments short but factual. Again, I was amazed at how framing my comments away from the negative impacted my attitude.

Wednesday morning I was reading Rick Warrens "A Purpose Drive Life" of a small group I facilitate. 2 phrases from the daily reading really jumped off the page and spoke to me.

The first "Nothing is arbitrary...it is all for a purpose" made me consider that my reaction to everything should also be for a purpose.

The second "The essence of God's character is love" ignited a desire that I would like my essence to be love. No one was ever going to accuse me of that so this one is going to be REAL hard to incorporate into my character...Difficult, but worth it!

Petty annoyances plague my days but having implemented the power to CHOOSE not to be annoyed by this has been very liberating. I am surrounded by poor drivers, rude people, insensitive boors but I have to accept that as a member of the human race. I am adopting the attitude that people are doing the best they can and not let their bad behaviors (by MY standards) ruin the moments. I also read that when you complain about people, the listener assigns the attribute you are talking about to the teller...so all the more reason NOT to complain. It appears that the old adage, you are what you think is true. I have felt less stressed this week because I employed the CHOICE to let it go.

Those things that cause me the most stress are things that are really not worth it. Why should I allow an inconsiderate driver or store clerk, things tasking longer than they should, traffic, people calling me DIANE (not DianA) to rob me of ANY joy? I have to repeatedly remind myself that these people mean me no real harm, they don't know any better or they are in a hurry (insert any excuse that allows me to move beyond the moment). This realization has added peaceful moments to my week. I think CHOOSING to over look a negative is a keeper!

We need the courage to start and continue what we should do, and coirage to stop what we shouldn't do--Richard L. Evans