So I'm still here at the family ranch (house) in New Jersey, until Sunday afternoon when the car arrives to take me to the airport -- and home to my wonderful husband and kids. I'm really glad I came back to help my mom and to see for myself that she is doing better than I could have hoped, even though she won't be driving again for at least a month and she's still dealing with a fair amount of pain. But she'll have my sister nearby to help out with cleaning, laundry and food shopping, and there's a physical therapist and home health aide who will also come until she can drive, so she's got lots of support. Thank you all for your good wishes and thoughts for my mother's recovery; they must have worked because right now I hear her out in the kitchen preparing her own breakfast and she couldn't do that when I first got here!
I admit that I really had mixed feelings about making this trip. Of course I was happy to be here for my mom and to give my sister a break for a while, but this trip was unplanned and therefore a disruption in my life. For one thing, I hated the idea of being away from Georges for such a long time, and that part hasn't been easy although a once or twice-daily Skype session helps. I will never like being away from my husband, even though sometimes it's necessary and perhaps even good for us to be briefly separated -- so that we can have the fun of reuniting again!
For another thing, I was concerned the trip would really prevent me from getting any serious work done on my SSP*, not to mention several client projects already in progress. Fortunately, being in Boring-town, NJ has actually been a little bit of an advantage because other than taking care of mom and doing a little local shopping, there is nothing else for me to do BUT work. So I've made some good progress on the SSP, finished one client project and made progress on another, all in the past week. Sometimes an enforced isolation is exactly what we need to get anything done!
My attitude this week has been "making the best of it". Sometimes things happen in life that we wouldn't necessarily choose if it were left up to us, but we have to cope with it and go forward. And in so doing, we have two choices: to be miserable about it and complain about it every step of the way, or to make the best of it and do our best in spite of the way things are. I always choose the latter, because not only does it give me more peace of mind but also because I generally accomplish more with that attitude than if I were sitting around feeling sorry for myself.
I was telling a coaching client, just the other day, that we always have the option of choosing how to feel about things. This came as a bit of a surprise to her at first, but she quickly saw what I was talking about. We are generally pre-conditioned to think that our emotions are things that just HAPPEN to us, and we have little control over our feelings. This isn't true. We have much more control than we think, and in fact the ONLY things we can really control in our lives are our own choices -- including choosing how to feel. So when something happens in your life that you wished hadn't happened, you can't change the event itself or the reactions of the other people involved, but you CAN decide for yourself how to feel and how to react.
And it is our choices which define us, more than anything else. So when a coworker at work ignores you or is rude to you, and you feel hurt, angry or insulted... you don't HAVE to feel that way. You have the choice to look at the other person and realize that their behavior says more about them and their state of mind than it says about you, and you can walk away and let it go. It's a choice to feel badly about it. When a pickpocket cleaned me out by stealing my wallet in Paris in 2001, I had a choice, too: panic and get hysterical and angry -- which would serve no useful purpose and wouldn't get me my wallet back -- or be calm and just deal with the aftermath. I chose the latter and everything turned out fine in the end and my 40th birthday trip wasn't ruined.
So when I knew I had to come back here, I knew what it would mean to my daily life, and although I wasn't thrilled about the disruption, I decided that what I could do was make the best of it and be happy anyway. If I had come here feeling resentful or stressed out, the week would have been a disaster and it wouldn't have helped my mom much to have me grumping around the house (she's been doing enough of that for both of us, but she's sort of got a good excuse right now: pain!) My work would have suffered, too, had I been sitting around here feeling sorry for myself because I miss Georges and because I hadn't been planning on a trip back so soon after my last one.
Before coming here, I had no idea what to expect in terms of my mother's health and how well she might be feeling or coping with pain and with getting around the house, so I had to be prepared for anything -- since that was the part I couldn't control. Choosing how I wanted to feel -- happy, at peace with the situation, and productive -- in advance of coming here helped me keep my emotional equilibrium and gave me a much better experience this week than I would have had otherwise. I took control over the one thing I COULD control -- ME! -- and let the rest unfold naturally without resisting it.
If you have never thought about being able to choose your emotions and feelings, think about it now. Is there something going on in your life right now that you're feeling badly about (angry, sad, frustrated, scared) where, if you were able to shift your feelings to something more positive, it would make a huge difference in how you are experiencing the event itself? Remember: we can't change events once they've happened, all we can change is how we feel and react to said events. So how would shifting your feelings and reaction change the outcome for you? How would it help if you were simply to make the best of it?
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*If you like articles like this one, please join my new eZine mailing list! The eZine is free and is called "The Exception™" and will be focused on helping you boldly create the life you want. This is, of course, all a part of my Secret Summer Project which will launch in late August-early September, and those of you who are BOLD enough to sign up for the ezine in advance of the launch will receive a special Thank You gift in your email come the official launch date!
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