Reflection: Why this? Why me? Why now?

Do you ever find yourself reacting this way when things go sideways in your world?

It’s no surprise that stuff happens. You know it. I know it. We all know it.

Cars don’t start. People don’t finish. The weather blows. You find yourself out of patience, out of milk, or out of time!

Although the universe may be unfolding as it should (or so the Desiderata would have us believe), it’s not always unfolding as we think it should or as we hoped it would.

And so we’re left to deal with our reactions to what can feel like a stealth attack on our expectations.

Action: What to do?

You probably already hold in reserve a few strategies for just such occasions: take a deep breath, laugh it off, turn it into an entertaining story, chalk it up as the ‘nuisance of the day’. All good things!

What you really do NOT want to do is to take it all personally, to take offense, to shoulder these situations as giant burdens that you lug around for the rest of the week.

In a recent post, blogger and thinker extraordinaire, Seth Godin, puts this in perspective in a most eloquent way.

He observes, “The problem with taking offense is that it’s really hard to figure out what to do with it after you’re done using it. Better to just leave it on the table and walk away. Umbrage untaken quietly disappears.”

I love that idea! Give it a try with frustrations or disappointments that pop up today and tomorrow. Take less umbrage, and see how much it lightens your load as you journey on.

Quote Of The Week: Address it or forget it. If you feel you need to vent or react, then write the letter, make the call, confront. But if you don’t, then move on. Otherwise, you’re perpetually irritated with no relief. – Alan Weiss

Resource Of The Week: Here’s a meaty article by Joanne Chen of Real Simple that offers helpful strategies for How To Stop Sweating The Small Stuff when you find yourself feeling inconvenienced, defeated, anxious, disrespected, or just plain disappointed.

Readers Write: In response to last week’s ezine, In Praise Of Puttering, Pause reader CG writes: Puttering is a great workload manager idea! For results-oriented overachievers, a large time-consuming project that takes control of your workweek or month can often leave you feeling like you never accomplished much.

I often designate Friday mornings to putter and clean up a bunch of smaller tasks that have been put on the back burner. Doing so not only gets them done, it leaves you with a sense of accomplishment going home for the weekend.