Defining Decisions

You know that saying, “Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?” No one is productive when they’re grumpy in the morning.  They wake up in a bad mood and they can end up carrying that feeling with them the rest of the day.

 

Thursday night was pretty uneventful. I am thankful that I had the foresight to decide what I would be wearing in the morning and placed my dress, tights and shoes out by the chair in my bedroom.  I remember thinking that since I was waking up extremely early to get to a morning event, I wouldn’t want to be making difficult decisions like, “what should I wear?”  I decided what time I needed to wake up and I set the alarm.

 

At 4:45 I woke up, saw the time, and realized that I had a whole hour left of sleep.  Listening to my dog snoring in my ear, I immediately fell back to sleep.  The next time I woke up was 6:20. I stared at the clock and thought, “it’s just 6:20”.  My next thought was, “IT’S 6:20!!!!” It finally registered— I was meeting someone in 15 minutes.  I will admit that the first minute of my 15 minutes was a complete waste of time.  I spent it running in a circle achieving absolutely nothing, but things became more productive from that point on.  I threw on my clothes and began to fix my hair and put on my make-up.  As the dog watched, it dawned on me that I needed to allot time in my valuable 15 minutes to let him out and feed him.  As you might imagine, he let me know this was non-negotiable.

 

I ran back upstairs, grabbed my phone and brushed my teeth.  I had full make-up on and was completely dressed and was ready to walk out the door. I drove to meet my friend and got there only three minutes late. Not bad considering!

 

Looking back on that morning, it had all the makings of a really, really horrible day. One of those days that starts out really bad and just gets worst as it goes on. Not to mention that I actually got in a car to drive without having my coffee.  You need to understand that I go absolutely nowhere until I have my morning cup of coffee. However, my time calculation told me that it was either coffee or the dog, and the dog won.

 

Now here’s the interesting part of what happened that morning.  Aside from my one minute that was wasted running in a circle and spouting expletives, the rest of the time was just focused on getting my tasks done and moving ahead so I could follow through with my responsibilities. I didn’t spend any time thinking about how dumb I was, or why did this have to happen to me, or how I wasn’t going to have time to do my hair.  I just kept moving ahead and accepting what was.

 

At some point, the same thing will happen to you. You’ll spill coffee on yourself and stain your outfit, you’ll get soaked in the rain and ruin your great hair, or your alarm won’t go off at the appropriate time.  You have a choice whether you want to let this ruin your whole day or not.  You can focus on how angry and upset it makes you that things didn’t go the way you planned, or you can just let it go and move forward in life. You can be that person that woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I choose to let it go.