Manic Monday

Ever woken up in the morning and headed out to whatever you do with your day time thinking that everything is under control - that the master plan which you have devised will keep you firmly in the drivers seat!!  I do.

Imagine if you will, my surprise to find out by lunchtime that my plan has been utterly nixed - nothing left but a smoking ruin, and then wondering why you bothered to make any plans at all?  I do.

And it is not a great feeling when this stuff happens!!  But you know that - happens to you too, doesn't it!?

So I got to thinking about sharing how I deal with these things when they do happen, because they can be frequent visitors, especially if we tend to be busy, which most of us are.

I think that the first thing to remember, although hard at times, is that there is no one out to get us - some malevolent god who gets his jollies from making our lives miserable.  It may feel that way occasionally when we think that the camels back is about to break, but I think that you can rest assured that that is definitely not the case.

So how then do we maintain our equilibrium and poise when everything is headed down the shoot.  Oh, and we know that the answer does not reside in this or that deodorant!

Something that I have learned that can help a lot, and in fact provides me with a way to overcome the situations that I face - visualise the outcome.  There is more to it than that of course: the outcome that I visualise is guided by my desire to either burn a bridge or build/strengthen a bridge, mostly the latter, because that is really what it is all about at the end of the day - myself and person affected by whatever issue has arisen.  And whilst it is sometimes hard to keep this in mind, it is very important. Important because it speaks to personal value of all involved.

Added to this, I have a simple premise in life, developed over time through the example of others, as well as my own intrinsic understanding and experience, that says that personal value - our own and of the people with whom we interact on a daily basis - must always be considered carefully.  Our own value because it is entwined in all of the decisions that we make, good or bad, and can either lift us up, or become condemning, and in others, because the manner in which we treat their personal value ultimately has the same affect on us.

So effectively, the outcome that I visualise becomes the value-proposition that I offer to the other person or persons involved in whatever situation we find ourselves.  And that in turn can, and frequently does, lead to a positive outcome.

It is obviously easy to talk, because there will be times when our efforts come to naught, and then one must refer back to visualising the outcome again, maintaining an open-mind, acknowledging where we have failed and learning from that situation so as to be better in managing similar circumstances going forward.

However, and in closing, I find that as I think about outcomes that speak to, and enhance, the personal value of both others and myself, the frequency of successful outcomes increases, sometimes even dramatically.  And that is pretty desirable in my book!