The Skinny On January

We’ve all had those days where we woke up late and had to rush our way to work, school, etc. Maybe the power went out to your house during the course of the night, and when it came back on, the time on your alarm clock was way off. Or maybe one of your kids woke up in the middle of the night, say 2am and stayed up until about 4am. You went back to bed and were so exhausted, you ended sleeping through your alarm. Or maybe you turned it off and thought to yourself “I’ll stay in bed just ten more minutes” only to wake up two hours later.

We’ve all had those things happen. Instead of just embracing the extra sleep (obviously we needed it) and calling in or rescheduling, we have the habit of panicking instead.

The first reaction is to jump out of bed and scream “Son of a… I’m late!” The first thing you do is stub the crap out of your toe as you run to the bathroom. You growl in pain and anger, looking down to see that your pinky toenail is cracked and bloodied. Great.

You then hobble into the bathroom and start the shaving process; depending on sex, either your face or legs. During the course of shaving, you cut yourself bad. The bleeding doesn’t stop. You grab a big piece of wadded up toilet paper and apply pressure. The blood soaks through and you have to grab even more toilet paper, wad it up and press it hard against your wound. Five minutes later it eases up… a little.

Then you hop into the shower and turn on the water. As you turn the knob, it breaks. How are you going to turn the water off now? Usually the water takes a short time to warm up, but today it’s not getting hot… at all! So you suck it up and grit your teeth through a forty-second freezing shower. When you finish it takes you a couple minutes to figure out how to shut the water off. By the time all‘s said and done, you’ve spent about twenty minutes in the bathroom when you meant to spend five.

After you dry off, you run to your closet to get dressed. Then you remember… you were going to get up early and iron a shirt. You don’t have anything clean without wrinkles in it. Now you’re screwed, right? Another ten minutes goes by as you iron your shirt. But then, you can’t find any socks that match. What’s going on today? Argh! By the time you find some socks that somewhat resemble each other, you’ve spent about twenty minutes in your closet when you meant to only spend about one.

At this point, forget about eating anything. You don’t have the time to even grab something to go. You go to grab your car keys, but you can’t find them. Where’d they go? They’re around here somewhere! Then you remember… your kiddo was playing with them last night, but you don’t know where the rascal hid them. After thirty minutes, you finally find your keys in the oven, of all places! Makes you realize that maybe you should get some duplicates made in case this happens again.

Then you get into your car. You start your car, only to realize that the gas light is on. You’re just a hairline over empty. You remember that since you were going to get up a little early, this wasn’t going to be a big deal, considering you didn’t feel like filling up on your way home yesterday.

When you get to the gas station, every pump is occupied. You wait several minutes until a pump finally opens up. But this one has a note over the keypad where you slide your debit card into. It reads “PLEASE PAY INSIDE.” You slump your shoulders in dejection as you go inside and wait in line. But that takes forever as well. The lady in front of you needs Powerball tickets. She buys thirty tickets… and wants to pick the numbers all by herself. Argh!

By the time you leave the gas station, you’ve spent twenty minutes there when you meant to spend about three.

As you get onto the freeway, you see that traffic is backed up. At this point, you just want to go home and forget about your destination, but you can’t. You’re stuck in gridlocked traffic on the freeway. After twenty minutes of inching along only a mile, traffic picks back up. You see flashing lights and police cars and realize that there was an accident in the opposing traffic lane, and the reason it took you twenty minutes to go a mile was because everyone on your side of the freeway was rubbernecking to see the accident. Argh!

By the time you arrive at work, school, etc., you’ve spent nearly two hours panicking and stressing as you rushed and rushed to get to where you needed to be at a somewhat decent time. Instead, you are way too late, really frustrated, and freakin’ hungry. Remember- you didn’t have time to eat.

We’ve all been through this kind of morning and it’s no fun. So what do you do in this situation? What if you wake up late and have to be somewhere right away?

What you should not do is worry. So you slept in. It happens. Your teacher or boss has done it. Everyone has. So who cares? If you have to call someone and let them know the situation, then be responsible and do it. Let them know when you’ll be in, and when you do, make sure you give yourself enough time to do what you need to do without stressing. You shouldn’t have to rush through shaving, showering, eating, and just dealing with life, period. Things happen, so give yourself the time to deal with those things. But don’t rush. It never pays off. It only creates stress, panic, frustration, anger, irritation, negativity, etc.

Have you ever heard the saying “go with the flow?” There’s more to that saying than you think. Life is all about flow. The minute you have to force things or rush things, they never work out how you want and you just get frustrated, among other things. If you can learn to offer zero resistance to things that come up in life, and instead just deal with them as they come, one situation at a time, chances are you’ll have a more peaceful existence.

I’ve since learned how to do this and I can tell you, honestly, that my demeanor is much more relaxed and laid back. I used to be a rusher, not just in a situation like this, but all the time. It’s no fun, very unproductive, and the stress is very detrimental to your health, both physically and mentally. Life is not meant to be lived that way.

Just go with the flow. You’ll get there when you get there.

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 6:00 am and is filed under Positive Thinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.