Hi All!
I left work about 4:45 pm yesterday, open the doors of my office building, and was met with the -40 C frozen hell that is Ottawa right now. If you don’t come from a cold climate, well, just stay where you are, because you don’t want to be here in the winter!!! (Do come in the summer, though, because it’s beautiful!)
I walked a block north to catch my bus, fighting against the wind tunnel made by high rise government buildings. I notice that there seemed to be many more people waiting than usual. “Hmmmn,” I think “I wonder if there’s a hockey game tonight at the Canadian Tire Centre”.
I wait. And wait some more. This is unusual. I wait some more. I’m getting really cold. Finally, I see “97 Bayshore”…and watch as it drives past me, packed to near breaking point. It figures! I just want to get home!!
This is very strange. Another 97 bus…drives by. I can’t feel any of my extremities now. I can feel my core temperature dropping. I look at other people to see if they are as cold as I am. I can’t see most of them because they have hoods pulled as far down as possible or scarfs wrapped around their faces.
FINALLY, a third 97 bus arrives…and passes. WHAT is going on? I know I cannot be out here for much longer.
I see a local bus that will get me to a nearby mall where I can call my husband to come and get me. It’s packed, but at least it stops! I force my way onto it. I don’t care if I’m hanging halfway out of the bus, I’m getting on this one!
I manage to wedge myself in and eventually get to the mall. I call my husband, I make it home to a steaming hot bath, and frozen tragedy is averted.
So why am I telling you this story? I just wondered how many of you picked out my flawed thinking in the third paragraph. Go back and look…I’ll wait.
“It figures.” What a loathsome phrase!
You see, for years, I waited for the other shoe to drop. From the time I was very small, I learned that things will always go wrong, no matter how you try to make them right. My father’s favourite saying was/is, “If there was a lottery and we had the only ticket and won, something would happen and we wouldn’t get our prize. The lottery office would burn down. Something.”
Talk about negative thinking!
I decided a long time ago, that I was going to turn that thinking around. So, every time I caught myself saying something negative, like “It figures!” I turned it into a positive. It took a really long time! At first, I could only watch my thoughts for 15 minutes or 1/2 an hour. But eventually, I was doing it all the time, until the negative thoughts no longer came automatically. I kept at it until the first thought was a positive one.
So what was different yesterday? Perhaps it was that I got out of work a little later than usual. Perhaps it was the addition of the extreme cold. Perhaps my self-esteem is suffering a little because I’m in a new job.
I don’t actually know the reason and I don’t really care. I am glad, though, it happened for three reasons:
- It reminds me how far I’ve come. That USED to be my normal thought process. NOW negative thoughts are caught pretty quickly.
- It reminds me that I need to continue to be vigilant about being positive because I’m human and I can (and will) slip up.
- I liked my response to my negativity.My first thought was “It figures!” My second thought was “No it doesn’t! MOST days I catch the bus without a hitch. THAT’s the usual. So, NO It doesn’t figure!” I caught the negative before it tumbled into a downward spiral.
What about you? Do you frequently think the worst will happen? How did you learn it? Do you enjoy being that way (do you get something out of it, like being a martyr and therefore getting sympathy)? What are you willing to do to change it?
Life Changer Tracy