I was talking to this 9 year old girl, "Tell your friend to go away...she is really irritating me." She replied, "My friend is not irritating you...you are getting irritated!!!" The thunderbolt from this 9 year old hit me very hard. For many years I have been trying not to react negatively to situations and I have succeeded in getting the better of situations many a time when I have stepped back and thought what to do next.
Most of the time our moods depend on our attitude and how we decide to react to a given situation. Yet we blame our work conditions, our colleagues, our friends or the not so friendly ones, our families and everyone else on this earth for all stress that we have to put up with.
I read the story of a New York Cabbie who would just smile each time someone cut him off on the road. When someone asked him as to how he could do that, he replied, "Someone is trying to dump junk on me. It is now left to me to decide whether I am going to accept it or not. Since I control whether to accept it or not, I have decided not to accept it." We have heard of so many stories of violence because of road rage. If only we could adopt the attitude of this New York Cabbie.
Another story that I have heard and think is worth sharing is about this donkey that fell in to a very deep pit. He could not get out and started screaming. The villagers could not tolerate the noise and when they saw this donkey in a very deep pit, they decided that the best course of action was to pour mud in to the pit and bury the donkey. So they started bringing in mud from close by and started filling the pit. As the first few buckets of mud fell on the donkey's back, he started screaming at the villagers and how ungrateful they were for all the good work that he had done for them. The mud started filling up and he realised that if he could jump on top of each bucket of mud poured down, he was moving up as the pit got filled. Soon, the pit was filled up and the donkey was on top and he trotted away happily....deciding never to complain when he is stuck in a lousy situation but to figure out what to do next to get out of it. They say that "attitude decides your altitude"...in this case, for the donkey, his attitude literally decided his altitude - from the bottom of a deep pit to the top of it!!!
Many a time when something goes wrong for us we think, "Why me?". Instead, if we decide what to do next, life takes a different turn and, definitely, for the positive. We can decide whether we want our lives to move positively or not. Let us take time and decide to live a life with a positive attitude.
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