Our Power Over Mishaps

Our server was blindsided by a giant sucker punch Sunday. Giant sucker punches pretty much suck anyway, but on Sundays? Who expects something so nasty on a Sunday? Godless brutality.

As my husband and I drank our Starbucks drinks and rode out the storm, it made me think about life’s sucker punches - also known as mishaps, problems, adversity, etc. Halfway through my Green Tea Frap with Raspberry syrup on top, I decided that the size of a lot of our problems are actually determined by us.  More specifically, in the way we react to them.

We have a lot more power over our circumstances than we give ourselves credit for. Sometimes we get in the mindset that life just happens around us and that we’re as helpless as Dorothy and Toto were during the tornado.  But we really aren’t tossed to and fro, totally at the mercy of an unseen force, it just seems like it.

When our own personal tornadoes come along, we have two choices:

1. We can make things better.
2. We can make things worse. 

Am I oversimplifying?  You betcha, but sometimes there’s a lot of truth in oversimplifying.  It’s just condensed and brief. Condensed, brief truth.  Like Dilbert.

If you think about other people for a minute, you’ll be able to come up with perfect illustrations of those who make bad things better and those who make bad things worse.  Usually, the ones in the “make things better” camp have one clear, defining trait that separates them from the other camp:  They keep their wits about them.  When the meadow muffins hit the fan, they don’t start bouncing off the walls screaming and hitting every panic button they can find.  They realize that responding like a chimpanzee would respond would accomplish as much as a chimpanzee would accomplish.

They stay rational and as calm as the situation will allow. 

Those who magnify bad situations throw that approach right out the thrid floor window.  They scream, rant and/or cry. If you’re really lucky, they might even throw something. And they most definitely look for someone or something on which to cast blame. A sport which has never solved a single problem or righted a single wrong.

The next time a tornado blows through your own personal Kansas, ask yourself if your response is making the situation better or if it’s actually making it worse. 

Finally, always keep in mind that many, many times our response is the thing that actually turns a wind into a tornado in the first place. 

Mishaps are like knives, they either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle. - James Russell Lowell