Take your weather with you...

Crowded House sang about it and in these days of January Blues I thought I would share a life lesson I learnt a few years back - there is only one person responsible for your reaction to any life event and that is yourself. 

You make your own 'weather' so "Always take the weather with you" and make it a sunny day!

Simple eh?... No, OK well think of it this way;

When did you last say / think / rant(!) "Oh I can't stand XXX anymore he/she/it drives me mad!"

Now consider - who is it getting "mad"? It is you and only you, so simply decide not to get "mad" next time he/she/it behaves in that way or does that thing - decide on another reaction and carry it out. Make it sunny, rather than cloudy. Honestly you'll be amazed at the results.

I know you're probably thinking 'yaddy yaddy yadda" - "whatever" - "self help mumbo jumbo!" and such like and (to be honest) I did too, until I tried it.

At the time I had a boss I (quite literally) hated - and that's a pretty strong emotion to be dealing with for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week - it was exhausting and eventually made me ill. 

A very wise (and coincidentally very rich) man who was linked to the company I worked for said to me "own your own reactions, don't let yourself get so wound up, try a different tack". 

"Ha!" thought I, "you know nothing old man"... but then I pondered - who was it being made ill by it all? Me. Who was it using up their emotion and living with all that stress? Me. What was I getting out of this situation? Lots of migraines and a very grumpy working life. Did I want to go on like this? No.

So next time I felt my stress levels rising at the presence of my boss, I made myself respond differently - I smiled at him, I acquiesced to his request for whatever it was and I did it - even though I still thought what he had asked me to do was wrong, I decided "he's the boss, his decision". He knew how I felt and my thoughts, he had decided differently - so what? his neck on the block, not mine.

There is another saying "if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got", so try to change what you do and I'm pretty sure you'll get something different as a result... and hopefully it will be better.

Once you've tried it you'll never go back - I still get wound-up, I still get cross, occasionally violence springs to mind as a viable reaction (!) but (honestly) I choose when something's worth the argument, I decide when to take on the fight and - more importantly - I decide when not to.

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal to throw at someone else - you are the only one sure to be burnt"