How You React Makes All The Difference!

So I was driving to the Metro station this morning with my wife and son when, all of a sudden, the lady behind me flicked me the finger. A few seconds prior I had put on my turn signal, saw that she was slowing down, and made my move into her lane. I guess she didn't intend to let me cut in and her slowing down was just coincidence, which made her very upset and prompted her to show me her nicely manicured middle finger.

In return I showed her my two fingers, middle and index, making the "peace" sign. That was easy. What took a little effort was what happened within me after that. I started picturing her face and repeated "God Bless You", to myself, and focusing on loving this person who was obviously having a more difficult morning than mine. I felt so at peace after doing that, and that feeling has stayed with me throughout the morning, which is awesome!

This got me thinking about a couple of things. Number one, it reminded me of the best explanation of being "at peace" that I have ever heard: "When you wish for your worst enemy the same level of happiness you wish for yourself". Think about this one. If you make it a habit to continually pray for those that you have had challenges with, no matter what they have done to you in the past, you will find a peace unlike anything you have ever felt.

The next thing that I thought about was this: "The way you react to your circumstances makes ALL the difference". Again, absolutely true. Think about this turn of events in my aforementioned scenario: Lady flicks me off. I get upset, yell at her and try to block her way through. This is how our days would likely progress:

Her: She was already in a bad mood. This encounter with me just made it worse. Her co-workers are likely to hear the story in such a way that is going to lower the collective consciousness of the workplace. So, all of a sudden, something that affected two people is now affecting many more.

Me: I'm all worked up about this situation. When I get to work my co-workers are going to hear about it, and my mood is not in the right place to help clients. Again, what affected two has the potential to affect many. And on top of this, if I'm impatient or rude with a client, we risk losing business. Now we have one former customer who is more than willing to share his bad experience with anyone he comes across.

My wife: She's upset at me for going off on someone else. I'll definitely hear about it later that evening, which is potentially going to upset us even more and might have us not talking to each other for another day.

And I won't even venture into thinking what kind of repercussion this event would have on my 3 year old son, but I know it will not be good.

I know this is an over exaggeration of the story, but the point is, if your reaction to a negative behavior is another negative behavior, where does that negativity stop? Who stops it? How many more will be affected by it? It's sad but true, this type of reaction WILL trigger more and more hostility, to the point where people get killed over what began as a road rage incident.

We have the option to not let these events get to us. We can turn a negative behavior into a positive experience. We have to have an open mind, and more importantly, an open heart, in order for this kind of love to permeate onto others.

;^) Love to all!