Life! By Design_ 6 Steps to an Extraordinary You - Laura Morton [37]
Perhaps you obsessively read tabloid magazines, feeding off every headline as if these celebrities are people you know. This too brings drama into your life. You are living off other people’s drama and, worse than that, these are people you have never met!
I know a woman who had spent most of her life gossiping. I challenged her one day by asking, “Outside of your connections with friends, what benefit do you get from gossip? What benefit do you get from passing on negative information or bad news? I understand you feel connected to your friends, but is there another way you can achieve that same rapport?” She had never thought of her daily chats with girlfriends as damaging, but they were because they usually allowed the misery, misfortune, or negative circumstance from someone else’s life to momentarily become a part of her own. She had become part of the problem by spreading the word.
Minidrama presents itself every day. It’s unavoidable. I’m talking about getting stuck in traffic, a delayed flight, having a meeting canceled, or missing an important phone call. It comes when you’re trying to get to your son’s soccer game or get home on time for a wonderful meal your spouse worked on half the day for you. More modern-day drama might include impulsively sending an email you probably shouldn’t have without first sleeping on it, or text-messaging, emailing, or befriending an ex on Facebook when it might upset your spouse if you’re caught. All of these circumstances can create drama—if you let it. Your response to each of these scenarios will dictate the outcome.
A man walked up to me at a seminar and told me about a terrible car accident he was involved in four years ago. He stood before me crying that he hadn’t been able to work or make any money since the accident because of his back pain.
As he spoke, I realized that:
He was at one of my seminars, so I knew he could leave the house.
He was walking, standing, and moving without any assistance.
He was telling me why he couldn’t work.
I wanted to honor the fact that he had suffered a terrible injury, but I also wanted to grab him by the shoulders and scream in his face, “It happened four years ago! Get over it!” He was so stuck in the past and living in the drama of what happened that he couldn’t get over it. He was obviously capable of finding work; he was choosing not to. He wakes up every morning talking about his hurt back and an accident that happened four years ago, which brings the drama from his past into the present and, unless he chooses to change, makes it his future. His alternative would be to wake up and say, “Four years ago I suffered a debilitating accident. Forget it. Today is a new day.”
I have a dear friend who, after years of unsuccessfully trying, finally got pregnant. She was thrilled with her good news and had a relatively easy pregnancy. When the baby was born, she was told it was doubtful her child would ever walk. Although the diagnosis was grim, my friend never once asked, “Why me?” Instead, she said, “What can I do to make my daughter’s life easier?” She took the birth of her daughter as a sign that she herself needed to slow down and just be present in her new baby’s life. To me, that is the ultimate expression of being free from drama. My friend is an extraordinary mom who has spent countless hours doing physical therapy with her child, who, six years later, I am proud to say, can walk.
An unmet expectation also creates drama. You expected “A” but got “B.” Your stimulus response is what creates the crisis. How you respond to the unexpected result will dictate the impact it has on your life. Here are a few examples of unmet expectations:
You’re in line for a promotion and don’t get it.
Your spouse planned a date night and the babysitter canceled.
You’re leaving for vacation and your boss says the company needs you to stay.
You expected a bonus and got a fruit basket.
You can see where I am going here, right? When you have an intention and it doesn’t work out, instead of sitting around, getting upset, or lashing out