Posts tagged Fifteen Years
Break Free From Negative Routines
Aug 24th
Wake up. Hit snooze button. Get up. Get ready. Go to work. Return home. Eat dinner. Collapse into bed. Rinse and repeat. It can be too easy to fall into the same mundane routine, and the deeper you fall, the harder it is to make adjustments. Maybe you feel more comfortable maintaining the same rhythm day after day, and that’s understandable, because change can be a difficult and frightening thing. However, what if change was your only option? Or, what if you knew that making alterations in your daily life, behavior, or attitude could significantly impact your life for the better? If you can overcome the discomfort and fear of change, you can see the positive effects you otherwise would have missed.
Sometimes, life places you in a position where you must adapt and try to succeed, or end up stuck and unable to move forward. Mark, a salesperson for fifteen years, suddenly found himself unable to find work, because of the recession in the 1980′s. He had no other training to fall back on, and decided to offer to mow his neighbors’ lawns until he could find a permanent job. While he was just trying to make ends meet, he ended up finding a lifelong career. Mark said he never thought that mowing lawns would change his life, but that’s just what happened, and he couldn’t be happier with this decision or this change.
While it is certainly not easy to start a new career, as Mark did, some could say he was forced into making some kind of change. Sometimes, you need to make changes that aren’t required for survival, but might bring some happiness into your life. The people you see daily could be dragging that happiness down for you. Your neighbor can’t let go of his grumpy demeanor, a store clerk always has a scowl on her face, and a relative appreciates nothing you do. While it’s natural for these negative behaviors and actions to annoy you, you can’t let them bring you down. Instead of returning the negativity or cursing them in your head, try sending them some positive thoughts and a prayer or two. After continually sending these good thoughts, these people may let some of the warmth seep in, and flash a smile or two in your direction. Try it and see if you can change the attitude of others, simply by being consistently kind, generous and loving toward them. Make a change in your thinking and actions to try and influence someone else’s life.
Sending positive thoughts and acting kindly toward others can change people’s automatic responses and actions. People will often mirror the manner and attitude they receive, which can make bad situations manageable, or that much worse. As an example, after a long flight delay, two gate agents tried helping the long lines of people find new connecting flights. One of the gate agents huffed and puffed her way through the task, raising her voice to passengers and repeating the same irritating mantra, “I’m doing the best I can ma’am!” The other agent calmly managed each passenger with a smile, apologized for the delay and told each one, “Let me see what I can do to get you on your way quickly.” The biggest difference between the two lines was that the passengers in the line with the disgruntled agent were also disgruntled passengers, whereas the ones in the other line, while still just as inconvenienced as those in the first line, seemed calmer and more satisfied in the end. The second agent was able to stay cordial and positive and her attitude rubbed off on those waiting in her line, which allowed both the passengers and the agent to have the best possible experience in a frustrating situation.
Don’t let yourself get stuck in a rut of negativity. If you’re dissatisfied with your current employment, explore what else is out there. When those around you send out negativity, surprise them by showing them kindness. Change is inevitable, but you can control the change by making positive choices and banishing negativity from your vocabulary, actions, and life.
Challenge Yourself to Clear the Clutter
Aug 20th
Is clutter taking up space in your rooms and in your life? Is it time to get busy clearing things out and getting things cleaned up and organized? How can you do this without becoming overwhelmed at the shear volume of it? I am in this situation with having to clear out fifteen years of clutter and accumulation in order to get ready for a move. When I think about it I am prone to feel like it is just too much to face. I don’t even know where to start. Every room and surface has things I need to go through and make decisions about. I have decided the only way to cope with it is to chunk it down into small bites and make a game out of it. Here is what I am doing.
I am now looking at each chunk as a store that I can go into and choose to have anything I want absolutely free. As I approach each “store” I take everything out and look at it in terms of what I do want. I have found that if I look at it in term of what I no longer want I am over whelmed by the number of things that are there. Besides deciding what I don’t want I have to deal with that pile of “in-betweens” the stuff I am not sure I want to keep or not. To get around this I go into the “store” and look for the things I do want. I select them and put them away. Then I have a pile I do not want. If I still have some of those “in-betweens” that I am on the fence about I put them in a box and label and date the box. In six months I will go back through the box and get rid of the stuff I have not used in that time.
Another trick I use is to think of the stuff I am giving away as a gift to someone else. I try to think of the usefulness and joy they will give to someone who would select them from my “store” shelves. The cool thing is that they will be free for those people who select them. What a great feeling that is. I get to imagine other people enjoying my stuff.
Hopefully these little techniques will be helpful to you. They have helped me get over the overwhelm of facing a large amount of things to go through and they have actually made it kind of fun to get on with the sorting out and organizing.

