Learning to Survive the Everyday

While I was running a few errands today, I stopped by a gas station to fuel up my car. Pulling behind the car up in front of me, at the front pump, I was suddenly honked by a van a little bit off to the side of the gas station. Apparently, he was waiting in line before I came onto the scene. The only problem was, he wasn't even in line at all.

In fact, not only was his van several yards away from the pump that I pulled into, but the guy was talking on his cell phone the entire time and didn't even bother to pull up behind the car in front him. So the problem was basically this--if he was waiting in line then he should have BEEN in line, so people won't make the mistake (like I did) that he wasn't on line.

Overall, it was a simple misunderstanding and one of my knee jerk reactions was getting all angry about it. But you know what? I decided not to and that's what got me thinking.

Being that it was still the holiday season and given that I live in one of the most over crowded states in the world (NJ), it's not a big surprise to see the roads crowded with tons of people looking for post-Christmas deals and cutting people of here and there. At times all this rush can drive anyone nuts. But the thing is, all of us are driven nuts by simple things only when we allow them to drive us nuts. So how do we not allow these things to drive us nuts? Well, it's quite intuitive actually.

First of all, we could learn not to put ourselves in situations that are prone to bring annoyances upon us. That could include waking up early, being organized, and not waiting until the last minute.

And second of all, we could actually choose to not allow mishaps to ruin our day. Yes, sometimes situations can get so bad that feeling miserable is unavoidable. But when it comes to just dealing with simple problems, we just have to keep in mind that those simple things that annoy us are exactly that--SIMPLE things. Though they will and do make us upset for the moment, but it's really up to us to decide if we allow them to get to us or not.

Personally, I always had trouble with keeping the right attitude even during simple situations. I mean, it's only human to not be perfect. But for today, I think I'll decide to be happy. Yeah, that's a good idea.