"As you think, so shall you become."
I had options at that point.
In my frustration, I could have cursed (after all, studies have shown that cursing under pressure or when in pain can actually have a hypoalgesic effect!) and allowed myself to become angry... I could have let it become the first domino to tip over in what could be an increasingly frustrating day... I could have focused on the fact that the kitchen had just been cleaned, and now I had coffee everywhere.
I surprised myself, actually. As a dad, maybe it's all that practice with diapers that were more like IED's (Improvised Explosive Diarrhea Devices?), but I calmly grabbed the roll of Bounty off the counter before it got soaked too, and started mopping up all 12oz or so of what I should have been drinking instead.
I would have been justified to have allowed myself to get angry and stomp around a little bit, right? To indulge in feeling frustrated? But that wouldn't have gotten me anywhere. You see, as I was looking at the big wad of paper towels I had just used to soak up all that coffee from the just-cleaned kitchen counter, something occurred to me that I simply wouldn't have had the clarity of mind to have thought of at all, if I had been preoccupied with my anger instead. I can picture it now, only because I've been there before: if I'd been indulging in my frustration by getting angry about the spilt coffee, griping to myself about having to clean it up, I would have already thrown the paper towels in the trash (extra points for throwing them in there as hard as I could). But instead, I was calm. I was all there, I was present in the moment, and that allowed me the mental space to do something kind of clever.
I smiled... and just wrung out all the paper towels into the coffee cup.
I'm not saying you have to wear rose-colored glasses. I'm saying you get to choose which glasses you wear.
