Thread: Change Your Words - Change Your Outlook

For lack of a better word, I was cleaning cat "snot" off the wall in their playroom (they were sick), and I started thinking about the situation as I grew more and more tired. I was in a bad mood.

After maybe a half hour into furiously scrubbing the walls I thought to myself "This is going to take forever". After having stated that to myself I grew angry and a little annoyed.

After another half hour I wasn't making any headway on the "snot covered" walls of the cat playroom. I stopped for a second after re-examining the situation at hand. I was really frustrated at that point and decided to delve into it a bit further. I scrutinized what was going on and drew out only negatives and I found that I was using adjectives such as "boring, tiring, maddening, disgusting, time wasting, etc."

Then I thought about what I could be doing instead of cleaning the walls and couldn't come up with many things other than read, go to the library to use the computer, maybe do something with a friend all of which were not necessities at that moment.

After weighing the cons, I decided to delve into any pros, I doubted I would find any, and this is where my optimism and change of words helped me persevere in a most mundane situation.

Here's what I came up with;

1. Instead of viewing the cleaning as tiring I chose to look at it as an energizing form of exercise. This immediately made me more interested in continuing the relatively hard physical work.

2. Rather than thinking of it as boring and time wasting, I decided to look at it as a gesture of kindness to those who weren't fortunate to have the ability to help themselves on their own, (ie my feline friends).

3. Then I thought to myself, "why am I mad about it". Then it hit me, I had no reason to be mad. It was a beautiful day, barely any clouds in the sky, I was alive and in relatively good health . It was just one more good day in the thousands of great days I plan to have in the future.

So if there's one thing I taught myself that I'd like to pass on is that no matter what your situation at the present, you can either choose to change it, or change the way you react to it.

Thanks

PS I moved this so can a moderator delete the other one in off topic? Thanks