This should have been posted yesterday. Sorry about that.
This’ll be short. This Thanksgiving our ‘Lustrous Potentate said that we needed to tone down the, and I quote: “Rancor.”
As I recall, I’m not the one who called half of the voting population ‘Terrorists’. So I say:
“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
‘Nuff said.
Have a great day, folks.
Robert Milne died June 5th 2005, at age 49.
That is not an extraordinary fact. Many people die at that age.
How and where he died is the extraordinary part: at an altitude of approximately 8850 meters during a final push to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.
When I knew Mr. Milne (we attended the same high school) he struck me a something of a nerd.
That's ok. He was focused on a goal: to study computer science. He had a love of mountain climbing. The two came together when he was field testing a telemetry device in the most remote locations: mountaintops. He had, prior to this trip, already summited the highest peaks of the other six continents and had just this one remaining. He didn't quite make it.
You can't really say that he failed in his quest, though. He went where his vision led him and I presume died with few, if any, regrets. Having more than my share of regrets, I envy him that.
Harry Chapin (singer-songwriter, wrote Taxi, Cat's in the Cradle, 30,000 lbs of Bananas) wrote a bit of advice given to him by his grandfather. In the interest of NOT infringing on copy-rights, I point you to a link on Amazon.com: My Grandfather .
Do your best to fight your own fights, as much as you can, and the fights you care about. Fighting somebody else's fights may be necessary in the course of your life (and, of course, do your best with those, too).
But, do not neglect your own battles, your own goals, your own dreams.
Yes, You Can.
The Madman
I get a lot of stuff in my email inbox. I expect that you do, too.
Some gets roundfiled, some gets forwarded, some gets saved for a day we need a laugh and need to pass it along.
Some gets added to the Blog, as being better that I can come up with on my own. Here is one of those things:
One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his breaks, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was really friendly.
So I asked, 'Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!' This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, 'The Law of the Garbage Truck.'
He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they'll dump it on you. Don't take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don't take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets.
The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so..... 'Love the people who treat you right - Pray for the ones who don't.'
There you have it. I can't say it any better than that.
When we return good responses for frustrated people's bad acts, it can help make the world better.
I haven't arrived there yet. But I'll get there.
Yes I Can.
So Can You.
The best way to reduce stress is not to become stressed in the first place.
Since we live in a stressful world this is not an easy thing. But we can get into non-stressful habits.
Not being a meditative person by nature or inclination it has taken me some time to get into the habit of acting properly to the need of the moment, instead of reacting with elevated emotion. My first self-taught lesson was: if the driver who cuts me off was doing something so terribly wrong, why was I not getting his license plate number? It was because I was overreacting with anger and not acting with thought. It took some time, but I am more able to focus on the license plate (often very quickly receding into the distance). I'm even able to write (in my mind, of course) the note I would stick on his windshield -- without expletives! Reducing stress, then, is learning how to find the path through the minefield of life by thinking, not emoting. Besides, what he was doing might not have been so terrible, once examined in the cold light of reason.
Simple enough to say, you say. Not so simple to do.
Well, no. And yes.
You see, most of us have gotten into the habit of emoting first and asking questions later. Just as habits are made, they can be changed, replaced by different habits. To truly break a habit you have to replace it with a better habit, preferably one that has an immediate payoff. In the case of my offending driver situation above, it was the contentment of knowing I could leave a note on his window that at least had a chance of getting through to him, if I ever got the chance. Besides that, it gave me a chance to use some of my copy-writing skills as well. Also, by remembering his plate number I had a fighting chance of properly identifying the person's vehicle. This is multilevel pay-off (and better than punching the guy in the nose).
Stress is a reaction to the environment. We cannot always change our environment. We can often change our reaction habit by acting in a deliberate way in a constructive fashion whenever a stress-causing agent attacks us. It takes practice, but we have to catch ourselves when we react, stop, and act properly instead.
Stress is truly an attack, designed to upset us and to throw us off-balance.
We beat stress by not allowing stress to win.
Yes, You can!
In our class today we were detailing all of our fears of being able to do the job once we went out to the production floor. It wasn’t phrased like that, mostly. It was phrased in the ‘what if?’ mode. The biggest ‘what if’ being “What if I don’t know the answer?” Being new and just out of training, not having the answer at our fingertips will be a given. What our practice time will amount to is learning how to find the answers. Most of us have worked on the phones, so taking calls, per se, won’t be the main problem.
The problem is, we will have problems. Life is a series of bumps in our path. Sometimes they are very large obstacles, not just a ‘bump’. My main problem is not the lack of knowledge, the unfamiliarity with the systems or even not particularly liking to deal with people on the phone (hey, you do what you have to do). My biggest problem is when my brain seems to fog up. I personally get nervous and angry when I can’t seem to think straight. This gets me agitated, and when I’m agitated I can’t think straight (see earlier). This is not a positive feedback loop.
Having had this happen (more than) a few times, I have learned to anticipate and plan for the times I become agitated. I have my worry stone and by squeezy ball. I write encouraging sticky notes and post them on my monitor. I take my walk around the building at lunchtime to give my body some physical activity to release the pent up adrenaline. I focus on pine trees and mountain streams in the off moments. And I try to remember to breathe. Breathing is good. It gets rid of carbon dioxide and brings in the vital oxygen. The very act of breathing relaxes the body. And, in my case, helps get rid of the brain fog.
The ‘Question and Answer’ time was good. It got our fears out into the open. More to the point, it got the problems out into the open. When we knew about the problems we could help each other on finding solutions (and not just answering questions). The solution in this case was to ‘Rely on your resources’ to point us in the right direction. Particularly for me, it’s to drill myself on the systems until they are nearly automatic. The scripting comes naturally enough to me that it won’t be a problem (that word again) to pick up. And despite me not particularly liking to talk to people, I do that well enough to get me through.
It all comes down to the ‘how-to’s’. How to do this, how to do that. Once you know how-to, the job is easy. This is called ‘know-how’. Once we know how to do the job, the fear of not being able to goes away, and we’re better able to get the job done.
Our biggest problem, then, is fear. Fear cripples us by making us doubt our abilities. Fear also attacks us by causing us to focus on the consequences of the misstep. How many mountain climbers reached the summit by looking down? Yes, we need to be aware of the consequences of a misstep so we don’t trivialize the consequences. But we focus on the task at hand, looking toward the goal. When we focus on making each step the best step we can, the precipice tends to fade into the background. We never quite forget it’s there, it just doesn’t command our attention.
Again, it all comes down to our focus (see my earlier blog). If we focus on our problems that’s all we’ll see. If we focus on the solutions we will make better headway.
Much has been said about the Law of Attraction. I’m not sure I buy into the ‘create your own universe’ aspect. But I cannot deny the logic of focus: what you focus on, commands your attention, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else. What you focus on draws you to it, just like wanting to see more detail in that photograph or painting that catches your eye. Consequently, you tend to move away from other things.
What does this come down to?
Like the title says: expect problems, but don’t let them dominate your thinking.
Expect problems, expect to overcome them.
Yes, you can!
Two sides of a coin.
Anger does little good for most folks.
Certainly there are times to get angry and stay angry until the reason for the anger is resolved, wrongs are righted, injustices satisfied. Most wars are finished (and sometimes started) on the idea of a wrong to be righted. Sometimes it's even true.
But that's not the kind of anger I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the little rages we have when someone cuts us off in traffic, insults our dignity, or otherwise offends us. Such small things can have tragically large consequences. For instance:
= Someone makes a lane change to get to an exit. The person cut off races down the same off-ramp hard on the tail of the first, striking the vehicle, and both cars are totaled when the both go off the embankment. Result: Property damage and injury to both people.
= A man fires a gun on New Years Eve. He misses his intended victim and the .44-cal slug pierces the wall of a home. Result: an innocent young girl dies in her sleep.
= A twelve-year-old shoots a six-year-old in the school yard for 'dissin'" him by stepping on his shadow. I doubt she knew what she had done wrong. Result: one child dead and the other - still a child - incarcerated.
Yet, such things could be avoided if we taught forgiveness on the part of the wronged party instead of conflict resolution by gunfire. Most things are accidental or unintentional, and most people would make a small change to not offend if informed. The grace of giving way covers a lot of pains. So does forgiving, and not remembering the slight, or the hurt, or the debt.
"I’ll get even!"
How? Is it worth the hurt returned?
"Yeah, but he owes me!"
Yes, but will he ever care?
"I'll never forgive him until he begs for it!"
You may have a long time to wait. Ultimately, who is being hurt by your action?
"He is!"
Only if he knows, and cares. The Roman soldiers were only doing a job when they nailed people to crosses. Whether they were forgiven or not was beside the point to them. But forgiving his executioners I'm sure enabled Jesus to die a more peaceful death.
"Cold comfort!"
But comfort nonetheless.
The truth is the only person being hurt by our un-acted upon anger is ourselves. And if we do act on it, often times we hurt more than what we intend. The proverb of "A man who seeks revenge must first dig two graves," is truer than most of us want to admit.
So, forgive.
Of course the truly contrite person will appreciate the forgiveness and mutual healing is apt to occur when the one injured forgives the one doing the injury. Relationships are restored that way. Sometimes that healing starts when we forgive the other without waiting to be asked. The person in the wrong may doubt that forgiveness is even possible.
I've managed to offend someone in particular, who told me, when I tried to apologize, that she neither gave nor accepted apologies. Our acquaintanceship ended at that point, as she continued to be raging mad against me. I tried to apologize a few more times after that, and gave up when I saw that it was pointless. It did explain a lot about her, however. You see, I'd been waiting for her to say "I'm sorry," concerning some slight she had given me, and she was never going to do it. I moved on.
I wonder if she still pulls up her anger and stokes its furnace regarding that personal bad day I had that spilled out on the rest of the people around me. I needed a lot of grace that day. And in that light, I could understand how she felt justified in "Never forgiving me." I knew I was contrite. I also forgave her for not forgiving me. I hope she has found the wisdom of forgiveness since then.
And yet I do the same thing she did: I trip over some memory and I'm flashing white-hot anger again. I try. I try to forgive, grant grace, ignore, whatever. What doesn't work is hashing it out in my mind again. When I fight these ephemeral battles over again I'm usually in no shape to be kind to anyone, including myself.
When I practice forgiveness, including forgiving myself for my own shortcomings, I do much better. In a weird way, though, the other is more "fun." It's hard to explain, except maybe to an adrenaline junkie, but part of me enjoys the rush, even as it threatens to destroy me.
Forgiveness is more for the forgiver than it is for the forgiven. The rush to destruction is sidetracked. Peace has an opportunity to calm, to mend, to heal.
In short, forgiveness brings us closer to that place where God dwells.
Let go of your anger. Forgive the offender. Let peace flow in.
Yes, you CAN!
