Life! By Design_ 6 Steps to an Extraordinary You - Laura Morton [39]
My wife and I took our sons on a trip to Hawaii when they were babies. We flew six and a half hours across the Pacific, and landed on Maui. I had spent weeks planning the trip to make sure every detail was taken care of so we could enjoy our seven-day family vacation. We chose to go during one of the busiest weeks of travel to the islands, so snagging reservations for our flights and hotel was nothing short of miraculous.
When we got to the hotel, we were met by the staff with leis and the warm aloha spirit of Hawaii. I approached the front desk to check in, already sinking into my much needed vacation.
“Hi, Tom Ferry checking in,” I said.
The clerk behind the desk tapped away on her keyboard, looking for our reservation. She kept tapping, and tapping, and tapping until she looked up and said, “Mr. Perry?”
“No. Mr. Ferry.”
“Oh.” She responded in a way that made me nervous.
My one-year-old son was now crying because he needed a diaper change, and my three-year-old was practically laid out on the lobby floor, desperate for a nap.
“When did you make your reservation, sir?”
My blood pressure was quickly rising because I suspected that what was coming next wouldn’t make me happy. “I made the reservation weeks ago,” I said, gritting my teeth.
“I’m sorry, sir. I have no record of your reservation.”
Now, I could have gone ballistic and begun to yell and scream at the woman behind the counter, but what good has that ever done? I stopped, took a deep breath, and realized, What’s the worst-case scenario here? I’m in Hawaii with my family. There’s got to be a room somewhere on the island.
I put a tiny smile on my face and asked the woman if there was anything else available or if she could recommend another hotel.
She told me to hang on for a minute while she checked on options. She returned five minutes later and said, “Mr. Ferry, I have good news. The general manager would like to upgrade you to the presidential suite for the same price you were paying for the other room, and tonight’s dinner is on us for the inconvenience.”
Because I didn’t overreact but remained calm and understanding and open to what was next, the woman behind the desk was more inclined to do something nice to help us out. She could have come back to say there was nothing available. Instead, she offered up the most expensive room in the hotel to rectify a situation that otherwise could have been disastrous.
So what’s the lesson here? How we choose to respond to the unmet expectations and drama that are everywhere will dictate responses and outcomes. So the next time you are met with an unexpected situation, stop, take a breath, and remind yourself that everything has a way of working out.
A good friend named Claude is one of the happiest people I have ever met. He lives totally drama free because he chooses to live By Design. When I asked him how he stays out of the drama, he explained that he sees life as a movie. If we can see each moment as nothing more than a scene, before you know it, the next scene will be up on the screen and the previous moment of drama will be in the past. This analogy is a simple way to see every moment, good or bad, for what it is: a moment in time that will soon pass.
So, here’s your assignment. Give up drama for the next thirty days. Stop making everything mean more than it is. See things as they really are. Try to create a better story around the events that happened in your life. Once free of the addiction of drama, you come from a place of peace. You will be able to recognize that you create your own certainty. There’s an enormous amount of joy and happiness