Synchronicity felt compelled to kick me in the butt today.
That’s fine: sometimes a swift kick helps me learn life’s valuable lessons more completely. I am guessing such things don’t happen to anyone else but me, after all.
It took me the entire standard work-day to respond to today’s trust30 prompt.
Here’s how it went:
“If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
And today's prompter Maryellen Smith added, “At any given point in time, you’re only one thought away from changing your thinking. What thought can you change today?”
I read it early this morning and thought, “I’ve done a lot of attitude dancing, changing it up, mixing it up, for years actually.” I wasn’t judging my own superiority, believe me, it was more a noting of the fact. I remembered back when I first read Tony Robbin’s “Awaken the Giant Within” back in 1990 when I was new to Bakersfield.
This was when I first started learning and living along such lines.
Early in the day I thought of circumstances where I have shifted my thinking and I am betting a part of me was waiting for something to happen.
It did.
I am involved with a program here in Bakersfield offered through a local hospital. It is a fantastic program which I love and they had a special offering for teens. I thought it would be perfect for Emma and she agreed to do it and then, today, after I finagled a way for her to participate even with a delayed sign up, she decided very last minute she didn’t want to go.
We’re talking so last minute that she walked into the door and said, “I don’t want to be here” and in front of so many people I respect, she bailed on the program. I felt terrible. She very honestly said, “I hate failing. I am not good at art, I don’t want to fail at this. I can’t, I just can’t.”
We left with me near in tears. She felt terrible, I know – but I wasn’t ready to talk to her about it.
I realized after a while, I had made this whole situation about my failings as a parent and not about her honesty. How many times have I wished I could be so honest and upfront about my feelings?
I could have forced her to stay and she, more than likely, would have tried to prove her point and failed.
I could have let her never even entertain the thought of attending.
I could have continued to make it all about me, but I remembered this lesson.
It is about a lot of things, but Emma not participating in this is not about me.
It is about her.
And it isn’t wrong, it just is.
(These are well practiced ways of thinking. It works to remember… not good, not bad, just is. Not judgment or wrong or right, just is what it is.)
And on a fun note, I tweeted a Thoreau quote a couple weekends ago and a woman from Concord responded. I love that in the midst of all this Emersonian thought, I made a new living friend in Concord as well.
Thank you, Trust30 friends, for continuing this journey.
Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot
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