Alternate Thinking

Just one day into my "be optimistic" plan, I slept through my alarm. Okay, fine, so I hit snooze for an extra half hour. Whatever, same thing. I'm sure I broke the record for speediest shower/makeup/getting dressed and out the door in history, or at least for the past year of my life. Normally, I would have said to myself "It's okay to be a little later than usual. half the office doesn't get in until after 9 so even if I'm 20 minutes later than usual, I'm still technically early." However, this morning I had a 9:00 meeting to prep for. Granted, it's only my weekly status meeting with my boss, but still, I like to be prompt and prepared.

I still had time to stop at 7-Eleven for my customary diet coke. It's just not a good morning if I don't get my "good morning sweetie" from the nice couple that run the store. Of course, since we had freezing rain last night and it was still raining this morning, traffic was a little heavier than usual. And of course I got stuck behind slow people once off the highway. And of course once in the parking garage, I had to stop and wait for a pedestrian to s-l-o-w-l-y get out of my way instead of mowing her down. As I sat there waiting, I was reminded of something my mom told me. Now, while I would love to give her credit for this philosophy, she actually got it from one of the social workers at the place where my dad got his chemo.

Here it is. Are you ready? Okay. When you're running late, or in a hurry, or just plain cranky and stuck behind a slow poke driver on the road or held up by an elderly person slowly crossing the street, remind yourself that this person is keeping you safe and your car undamaged by forcing you to slow down. Pretty good advice huh?

My personal addition to this is that in all honesty, you aren't going to get where you're going any more quickly if this person weren't in your way. I can't even count the number of times I've seen some jerk cutting people off and swerving in and out of traffic while I patiently waited in the lane of my choice, only to find that jerk face and I arrived at the same place several miles away at the same exact time.

Back to my optimistic and positive morning. When I arrived in the office at 8:40, I checked my bosses calendar and it turned out he was up at the hospital for a meeting and hadn't rescheduled our meeting. "Oh well!" I said to myself. Now I can take my time, eat some breakfast, catch up on e-mails and be even better prepared for our meeting whenever it happens.

Yay me! Go optimism!

Be Optimistic...

Don't you be a grumpy, when the road gets bumpy just smile, smile, smile and be happy!

Happy New Year to all my loyal readers! I've never really been one for New Year's resolutions. I always predicted that after about a week I'd relapse back into whatever bad habit I decided to drop, so I rarely bothered.

In the past month or so, however, I have caught myself several times feeling and acting very negatively. It's not pretty. You know those bitchy girls who do nothing but complain and put other people down? You know how you hate them? Yeah, I really don't want to become one of them. I've known many in my short life, and really dislike their poisoning effect on everyone and everything around them.

So here's my resolution: I resolve to be more optimistic and positive in 2009. Now I know some people think I'm overly perky and happy as it is and the thought of more sunshine and butterflies is just too much to handle. My resolution is not to increase my regular level of positivity, instead, I will be attempting to reduce the amount of time I spend in Negative Nelly mode. Stay tuned on this...