This morning my daughter was getting her children ready for school in a rush. The rush part was causing her much stress. My grandchildren, like my daughter, are not morning people and, although they love school, they would rather get there sometime in the mid-morning than at 8 AM. They awaken slowly, with much encouragement, often to the point of lifting them out of bed and placing them upright on their feet with their eyes still closed tightly against the start of the day. And, being only three and five years old, they are easily distracted and efforts to get dressed, brush teeth, comb hair and eat breakfast are often delayed by a toy, a book or a disagreement between brother and sister. Patience is a must to survive the morning wake-up routine and patience was in short supply for my daughter this morning. Perhaps she did not sleep well or has not fully recovered from the cold virus that our household has shared this past week or she may have been worried about something. Maybe, she was just in a bad mood, as we all are from time to time, or perhaps she got up late herself, leaving little time to get the children ready before they had to leave for school. The result of her lack of patience, however, was a voice-raising, child-crying episode that tainted the start to everyone's morning. I rose from bed and joined her and the children in the bathroom for the morning teeth-brushing activity and inquired as to why she was raising her voice which was, inevitably, leading to the crying fits of the children. Understandably, she was quick to blame the children - they don't listen, they don't pay attention, they are too slow - all true statements. But, they are just little kids who are learning how to get up and get going. After all, this is only my grandson's second year of school and my granddaughter's first. To her irritation, I pointed out that her reaction to their actions, or non-actions, was her choice - the children did not cause her to raise her voice, that is what she chose to do. I would have really been ticked if someone said that to me under the same circumstances early in the morning, so I understand if she was not too thrilled to have me standing there at that moment, but I felt my statement needed to be said. Unlike me, I hope she learns the lesson that others don't "make" us react the way we do while she is still young enough to incorporate that wisdom into most of her life. I learned that lesson late in life and still sometimes struggle with it.
My daughter was concentrating on the negative things, which were the children's lack of attention and slow responses, and allowing that to irritate and annoy her. The more attention she paid to the negative, the more it happened and the more upset she became. Her reaction was normal, but not helpful. She could have shifted her attention from what the children were not doing and concentrate on what they were doing. By shifting her attention from the negative to the positive, the positive would grow. By not reacting to the negative in a negative way, she would stop the flow of unwanted actions and reactions. Perhaps, she needed to just accept that they started off their morning late and getting to school on time, while maintaining a level of harmony and cooperation, was not possible. So, be late this time and make the choice to start the day off earlier and better tomorrow and for all the upcoming days.
Sometimes when we learn a lesson, when we have a light-bulb moment and something that was confusing becomes clear, when we reach a point when a change is necessary, we just need to decide right then that we will start anew. Often we put off changes until New Year's Day or our birthday or some other significant date, but when we put off the action of change, we lose the momentum and energy of the lesson as it is happening, or we just forget to later commit ourselves to the new action we want to take. Pause, take a breath, and say out loud, if possible, what you want to change and commit yourself to make the change immediately. I will wake up earlier on school mornings. I will be patient in the mornings. I will speak kindly and gently to others. I will - whatever - whatever it is that you choose to change RIGHT NOW. There is no better time than right now to start new.
My daughter is a good mother, but she, like all of us, have stressful moments and I am using this one incident to make a point about reactions, choices and changes. We are all in training to be better people. We all have bad mornings, stressful days, short tempers, sharp tongues and a lack of patience from time to time, but we can all be aware of what is happening - the triggers and our reactions - and choose to change - not tomorrow or next month or at the start of the new year, but today. By making a conscience decision in the moment and by saying the words of commitment out loud or clearly in our minds, we create a memory that will be triggered the next time we are faced with the same situation. We make a promise to ourselves and to the Universe that we acknowledge the lesson and are promising to change.
Daily irritations may seem small and not worthy of our attention, but what occurs on any somewhat regular basis accumulates into a heavy cape of negativity that weighs us down and strips us of the positive energy that we need to manifest our desires. If we can learn to react positively to those negative triggers, or even better, learn to see those negative triggers in a positive way, we can cloak ourselves in positive energy that will protect, energize and inspire us.
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