I hate the rain.
Grey skies and rain-drenched highways evoke a spectrum of responses as we roll out of bed to begin another week of work.
For some, including me, dreariness and traffic jams fill the imagination before we even get out the door.
For others, thankfulness for the nourishing and cleansing water covering our desert metropolis fills our hearts, and we smile.
It’s a matter of perspective. Same circumstance. Radically different experiences of it.
Particularly powerful, though, is to realize that you get to choose what perspective you adopt each morning.
Given that it’s Monday morning, and we’re trying to get our weeks off to a good start, I’d venture that anything we can do to read refreshment and gratitude into the precipitation would help set the brighter, more constructive tone we want for the busy week ahead.
How aware are you of the perspective with which you interpret circumstances? Do you even realize that you are making a choice when you interpret circumstance as positive, negative or somewhere in between?
Try an experiment with me. Next time something out of the ordinary happens: like a change in weather, a deadline change, an irritable client, an absent co-worker. Try noting your initial reaction. Then write down three other possible interpretations of the same set of circumstances.
Now take another look at your original reaction. The choice is yours, and you are, in fact, making a choice. Will you stay with your original interpretation of the circumstance or will you choose to adjust it?
The choice is yours. You have more power in how you experience of what happens around you than you think.
I‘m still not particularly fond of rain, but I choose to be grateful for its gift of life and appreciate the clean skies that will result. My week is off to a much better start.
What about yours?
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