Here is the scenario: life throws you a curve ball. Things don’t go your way. You suffer an embarrassing moment in front of colleagues, your spouse or your kids. What are your responses? Yes, I believe there are more than one. I mean responses that are immediate, near term, long term and for life. How do you react to these kinds of challenging changes in your life? Bitter or better?
Bitter
Do you get bitter over the issue? Will you allow anger or other negative emotions to rule the little place in that video library of your mind? Every time the mention of that moment comes up, you lash out, making very vile comments, turning red, and huffing off to simmer in your self made juices all over again. You let relationships suffer over that moment. Some people make a vow to:
“never let that happen again”.
Being bitter even has been proven to impact our health. Blood pressure, ulcers, and a host of other factors can build over time as we stew over the bad thoughts and bitterness caused by bad moments.
Better
Or are you the kind of person that will make it better? By better, I am talking about assessing the whole truth of the circumstance openly and objectively. Then finding a nugget of gold with which you may prosper by changing some area of your thoughts:
- your technical/professional knowledge
- your behaviors
- your emotions;
By making one or all of these choices, the next time something similar arises, (and it will), you can respond in a much more positive way.
Being better also means forgiving any person or group who may have been the source of the bad moment. That little mental video I mentioned should not include the replay of the look on someone else’s face when they “got you”.
Let it go. Be BETTER.
