Change Gears! Life Gets Easier!

It was early Saturday morning and I was stopped at a red light. As I sat there a cyclist came peddling across the crosswalk and I noticed that he was peddling really fast, but hardly moving with respect to the effort he was putting into the peddling. I noticed his bike was a 10-speed and all he had to do was change gears and he would have gone faster and further with the same amount of effort.
Every day we will have at least one opportunity to change gears and discover that life gets a little bit easier. For example, your boss tells you the report you spent all week on is not going to work for the meeting scheduled for Monday and today is Friday afternoon. What can you do with that? You have the following gears:
1. You could quit.
2. Scream and tell your boss exactly what you think. (Just another version of the number 1, but he fires you rather than you quit.)
3. Go get an iced latte. Lots of calories and it blows a hole in your diet. Then you think “whatever” and contemplate a Venti white chocolate mocha with whip. Notice you are feeling worse now.
4. Breathe (which you are going to do anyway) but with your focus on the breath as a way to calm yourself.
5. Cool off by walking around the building or hallways.
6. Talk with a friend that will listen and not give advice, sometimes hard to find.
7. Tell your partner in hopes he will tell you, “Oh honey don’t worry. You can quit if that is what you really want to do.” (Some people are in this position, but most are not.)
8. You could think you are the only person in the world that has a boss like this and how undeserving you are of such circumstances.
9. Accept that the report has to be redone with some grace. Grace here means not making your situation worse. Instead of being critical of your boss and feeling madder and madder think of ways you can salvage some of your weekend plans.
10. Read this list and realize you can change gears!
 

This article was originally published at . Reprinted with permission from the author.