FIRE
by Val Leichtman
Tick, tick, tick, tick . . . She rushes around the house to the beat of the clock. She grabs her purse and rushes out the door. Getting to her car, she realizes she left her keys in the house. She slams the door behind her as she rushes back to the house, the door starts to smolder. Grabbing her keys, she realizes she left her cell phone charging upstairs.Sweat starts to run down her back as she takes the steps two at a time, little spouts of smoke start to rise from the steps . Breathing heavily on her way back down, she doesn’t see her son’s toy on the step and trips over it, banging her knee into the railing as she grabs onto it, keeping herself from tumbling down. The railing bursts into flame.
Everything she’s touched has caught on fire. The more frustrated she becomes, the higher the flames and the more she burns herself.
—
The above scenario is an exaggeration, but it is relatively true for me. Whenever I’m in a hurry, I make more mistakes. I forget things, I don’t notice things, I hurt myself. It’s like everything I touch really does get set on fire. My frustration and negativity gets sucked up by the things around me and then nothing cooperates. And what’s worse is that even after the scenario is over, I’m still in a wretched mood because I’m dealing with the effects of my “burns.”
Lately I’ve been working on slowing down when I feel myself start to “heat up” in a situation. Even though it seems counter-intuitive to your subconscious, slowing down when you want to speed up, enables you to get things done faster and more efficiently because you make way less mistakes. You also don’t get “burned” in the process.
JUN