Sour Puss

You know that old expression, “waking up on the wrong side of the bed”? Well, the other day I woke up instantly upset. I contemplated not even getting out of bed. And, truthfully, I didn’t need to. Since I’m working from Europe, no one in the U.S. would have been up for hours. So if I’d gone back to bed, who would notice?

One could argue that the culprit was a case of the Monday Morning Blues.

But I didn’t really feel blue. More like fire engine red.

I was upset for no apparent reason at all. You know how it is… you’re toddling along life’s great highway, happy as a lark, when all of sudden there’s a major road bump, the highway turns to quicksand, and your happiness sinks.

Now, often we know the reason why we’re not happy. Starbucks screwed up your double, super-duper, caramel macchiato with extra foam. Don’t you just hate it when that happens? Someone cuts you off in traffic. Or a plan didn’t go the way you wanted. You can point to those road bumps and say, “See, this is why I’m not so happy.”

You know that we get to choose the way we react to things, right?

But, even so, sometimes we “choose” to go to the dark side. Darth Vader is just too enrolling.

Sometimes we end up in a world and we have no idea how we got there. Take my morning earlier this week, for instance. There were no apparent speed bumps. Everything should have been smooth sailing. On the docket was writing, a call with a potential client from Italy (my favorite country in the world), and a call with one of my favorite clients talking about how to quadruple his sales this year. Does it get any better? Of course there would be all the other things – emails, phone calls, and other very important CEO-type work (the kind of stuff you do to make it look like you’re worth your pay) – so why the sour puss?

Good question, but something I had no answer for. Whatever was going on was not on the conscious level.

One thing I’ve learned in life is that there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye. There seemed to be a party going on in my unconscious and a fight must have broken out. I hate it when I get the repercussions of a fight that I wasn’t even a part of. Normally this would have set me down a path and the day would have gone a particular way. I could see the writing on the wall.

You see, every morning, the first thing I do is meditate. But, I didn’t want to meditate that day. I just didn’t feel like it. You know the feeling, when you’re in a dark world and it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel? I began a conversation that was not very productive, trying to convince myself why I shouldn’t meditate…

Luckily, I saw the rabbit hole before I lost myself in it.

When we’re fortunate enough for things to slow down, there’s an instant where we can see the two paths before us. And not only can we see the two paths, but we know instinctively which one is the right path. It’s like our unconscious knowingly pulls us in the right direction. You know what I’m talking about. You have experienced this.

Now, I’m not saying that we choose the right path every time (sometimes Darth makes the “wrong” path seem more appealing). But it’s good to recognize when we’re having those moments. Too often they fly right past us.

Luckily for me, as things slowed down that morning and my mind quieted, I knew exactly what there was to do. So I sat down and put my mind on my breathing.