I was told once that if you are to shine a light on a negative behavior that you exhibit, it cannot exist under your observation. For instance, if a person has a tendency to be dodgy with their eyes while in conversation, and no one ever tells them that it is often perceived as insincere or untrustworthy, they may never be able to alter the action. Something that stuck with me from the reading of “The Art of Possibility” by Zander and Zander this week was Rule Number 6.
In the weeks prior to the start of the fall semester at Keystone College this year I was the most stressed I think I have ever been. It was to the point that I was quite short and downright nasty to my coworkers when they would pick on me for being in a bad mood. I kept tabulating all the reasons I had to be stressed out, and why none of them could understand because they weren’t in the same situation as I. The work environment had become a place of eggshells and thin ice, because my temperament was spilling over into the attitudes of everyone else. My supervisor had on several occasions tried to speak to me about lightening up, but I couldn’t hear him through my mind’s voice screaming about all that I needed to get done in the upcoming weeks. It wasn’t until reading about Rule Number 6, that I realized that it was exactly what I was doing. I was taking myself too damned seriously, thinking that my life situation and my problems were more important than all of those around me.
This leads me back to my opening statement. It wasn’t until reading this passage, that it was revealed to me that I was taking it all a bit too seriously. Once I was able to see that this was the root of my transgression and negativity, I was able to laugh at how ridiculous I was acting. After that, the problems that I thought were the most serious in my world suddenly became like a book of fiction. They were only as real as I made them, and by looking at them with a bit of levity, they went from being impossible problems to fun challenges in a game that I was inventing as I went along. Who needs all that stress anyway?
Great opportunity to learn and something to work on. It's been my experience that those who are passionate and young tend to be those who haven't yet learned that a tap on the throttle gets us there just as easily as slamming on the accelerator. I know that I was definitely that way. It's not that I didn't have a sense of humor, it's just that those who didn't know me very well never saw it. I'm a bit better at that now, but it's a work in progress. :-)
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