Wednesday, April 09, 2008

On Taking Things Personally...

As most of you know Oprah is doing an online class on the book "A New Earth". This book and her class are to help us all to find our life's purpose. I have not read the book, nor do I take part in the online class. I do however have XM radio in my car so I listen to the Oprah and Friends channel from time to time. On a few occasions that means listening to encore airings of Oprah and Eckhart discussing various chapters in the book. Yesterday I caught just the tail end of things and it had something to do with giving up the notion of control.

Oprah and Eckhart were talking about how they didn't understand why people get upset when they are stuck in traffic. Since traffic is my Dante's inferno my ears perked up. Eckhart was saying that traffic isn't "personal" so why get upset. That the cars aren't sitting in front of you just to piss you off so we should all let it go, to not get angry and rail against something that is beyond our control. "But Eckhart I am the queen of railing against things I can't control" I said to the radio. So as a change of pace I'm going to try not taking things personally. Like when my daughter blows her 1000th raspberry of the day - soaking yet another item of clothing I'll let it go and know that she isn't trying to upset me, she's just a creature of habit. Or when a customer complains about the price of something I've quoted him. I will have it looked at by my boss to be sure we're offering the best price we can and then offer that to the customer. If its not good enough - it doesn't mean that I'm not good enough - just that the quote isn't and if they end up going somewhere else then so be it. As for being stuck in traffic - that's a tough one, but I'll try.

2 comments:

Angry Inky said...

Oh. . .Is that all I need to do . . .let it go? Why didn't I think of that? Come on, he better have something more than that if he has this many people listening to him. He's right, but for the price of the book and the time online, I would expect more.

Tara @ Feels Like Home said...

It's a tall order. Good luck!