What do you expect?

Do you ever get up in the morning and think ‘It’s going to be one of those days? Maybe you put the toast in the toaster, pressed it down and the fuse blows.  Or you are about to leave for work and suddenly realise you have put your top on inside out.  You think ‘Everything is going wrong.  Maybe I should just go back to bed before things get worse.’

But you decide to stick it out and you set off for work.  You find a good parking space and so have time to pop to the coffee shop before you go in to the office.  Bonus! The staff in the coffee shop are slow though and you get more and more anxious that you are going to be late.  You order a filter coffee in the end because it’s quick and then you have to dash to the office and in the process splash coffee over yourself.

In the office all hell has broken loose because the Director has asked for all the PIDs and the ACTs to be on his desk by Thursday and you can’t even remember what ACT stands for!

Thank goodness Carol from accounts has bought doughnuts or you just wouldn’t be able to cope with the day at all.  It’s going to be a long one that’s for sure.

Does all this seem familiar?  Do you get days like this?
What are the signs that it will be a good day, or a bad day? What sets the mood?

If we are truly honest with ourselves.  Isn’t it up to us? What we pay attention to and how we think of it defines our mental state.  If the toaster breaks in the morning does that really affect the whole of the rest of the day. Ofcourse it doesn’t. How does having to wait in a queue for coffee cause your director to make unreasonable demands on you? Do doughnuts really matter so much that they can affect the mood of an entire day…er…tricky one… but no, not really.

Ofcourse that doesn’t make it easy to change the way you feel in the morning.  You may have had too much alcohol the night before, or be really tired because you were up late with the baby/cat/PID.  But a day is a long time.  A lot can happen.  Some of it will be good, some bad. Sometimes it can reach extremes in either direction, but ultimately you are in control of how you feel.  It can be really helpful to just let go of the rules you make about life.  Do you have a rule that says a day is either good or it is bad?  Do you have a rule that ‘everything comes in threes’ so you are just waiting for the third thing?

If you do, is it worth asking yourself ‘Is this rule serving me?’

Maybe it’s time to break the rules and take life as it comes, or make a new rule that serves you better, such as ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff’, or ‘Life is full of surprises’, or ‘always cook your toast under the grill’?

Suggest some great rules on my Facebook Page www.facebook.com/itstimeforyounow