I overheard something funny at work today. Without boring you to tears with the technical details, a co-worker was upset about a thing that was set to install on his computer at a time he deems inconvenient. We received notices and were asked not to postpone the installation; he tried to postponed the installation and it installed anyway. He wasn't ready for it and it changed his productivity for about an hour. I then overheard him irritatedly recount the story to several of his co-workers and I noticed something: each time he told the story he sounded more and more irritated.
I noticed how that simply doesn't work for me anymore. There are many people in my life who try and help me remember to find the positive and to stay in the solution rather than the problem and that, ultimately, the way the world works isn't up to me. The more I am able to remember that, the easier it is for me to be OK with losing an hour of my morning to some installation for which I am due.
I am truly grateful for these people in my life--both sets remind me how powerful it is to simply choose to let go of the baggage that brings me down. The former does this by live and active example; I would rather not spend my morning being irritated and drafting an angry email if I can possibly avoid it. The latter does it in a more gentle and constant reminding way by not allowing me to sit in "poor me" when the solution is sometimes just to stop letting it get to me.
I look back at when the slightest upset in my plan wound me into a tizzy (sometimes I only have to look back about 5 minutes!) and I wonder how I was able to change my perspective. Practice, I suppose, is the best answer. That and a belief in the knowledge and realization that most things in life aren't up to me. Sometimes I really want them to be but my own experience has proven to me time and time again that they just aren't. And since they aren't up to me, my tizzy-ing has no effect on their outcomes but are rather just for my benefit. From there, I (slowly) learned that being in a tizzy isn't actually beneficial to my emotional and spiritual well-being and so if I just stop and go with the flow, things can get a lot easier.
This works for a lot of things, by the way. People treating me a certain way doesn't work for me anymore and so I create boundaries where I can and remove people from my life when that's the answer. Gossip doesn't feel as good as it used to and so I don't have to participate in a conversation if it turns down that road or I can even walk away from it altogether. Not paying my bills on time leaves me feeling unsettled these days and so I pay them when they are due. The same can be said for anything I do--or used to do--that doesn't work anymore. No matter what behavior it is, I can usually find a way to behave differently so I don't feel out of sorts.
Sounds easy enough that I didn't believe it could be true at first. They'd tell me to "choose to be happy" or some baloney like that and I shook my head because they just didn't understand. But after awhile I tried it. It works. I can choose to let things continue to upset me or I can choose to accept the outcomes I face in daily life. Try it. Next time something over which you have no control doesn't go the way you want it to, let yourself get irritated for a minute and then see what happens when you remind yourself that it's not up to you; that you have the choice to let it go and be at peace. The first time will be clunky...the second time maybe less so but after awhile, you'll find that quiet and slightly knowing smile resting on your face most of the time.
Life is just so much more comfortable for me when I'm not trying to force my way through it. It's relaxing to be relaxed even when things around me aren't what I think of as my ideal. "Freedom is not shelter from the storm but serenity within it," my guru used to remind us. For me, the freedom comes from letting go of behaviors and attitudes when I realize they just don't serve me anymore. Serenity is the result...and it's priceless.
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