Why does everything at work come across a national crisis? Quick! I need it now! You're the final step!
That’s when I kick in with a dirty nasty habit…laughing. A trick I picked up from Superman and Aqua man who never buckle under pressure. They look at the situation and grin.
I recently caught a Wal-Mart employee pulling off the same trick; couldn’t wait to get in his long Black Friday line to catch the cause of his unstoppable vibe. His response, “There’s no reason to freak, no matter how fast I move only one customer checks out at a time.”
I’m not crossing the line when the words slip from my fingertips claiming this is the absolute worst time of year. The holiday spirit in America is based solely on reaching another day off that took 200 hours of unpaid overtime to reach.
If there was a large wooden ship waiting at the harbor promising to sail to a new world…would you get on board?
That isn’t going to happen…me being me…there’s got to be a solution.
From the incredible wisdom of Dr. Robert Carlson’s book Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff…the muscle we need to exercise is the inner voice that repeats over and over again, “Life isn’t an emergency.”
The average person justifies the current state of the world as being a major failure and how dare that happen on their clock. I know! We’ll work and work until it gets better! Only to learn being middle aged inside the boarders of the 50 states is the most dangerous time to be available for work—heart attacks, strokes, cancer, pneumonia are folding the workforce in half. How many people do you see wandering the halls with legs in braces and hands tied up in knots because of computer abuse?
My friend Alan is horrified of stepping outside his door until he’s 55. That’s the number most men reach to start living again. He read somewhere that guys between the ages of 42 and 55 can drop at any time. In the last five years I’ve lost four of my radio friends to heart attacks and suffered one myself on July 21, 2009. We’re killing ourselves! And for what reason?
Because we’ve turned living into a national crisis. It costs money to live and we’ll do everything to make it work.
Dr. Carlson advises, “Tell yourself over and over…life isn’t an emergency.”
As easy as it is to turn the smallest thing into a total melt down rather than counting to ten blurt out the words, “Life isn’t an emergency.”
Stop beating yourself up because you didn’t reach the deadline. Stop falling into the fire pit of coworkers who are drowning themselves in self pity and fear. You can help someone through a situation without jumping in the hole because once they’re out, what are the real chances they’re going to turn around and lift your tail back to safety?
Being aware of your mood swings is a brilliant first step. All too often we jump onto Face Book or an old fashioned email and cast out the shadow. Great! That’s what the world needs. We abuse each other so much we’ve stopped flinching.
Captain Positive Arroe isn’t always in costume. Being a spiritualist opens too many doors to being beat up but you learn to rely on the lessons of meditation and motivation to serve as your tools to climb off the war torn tank and keep walking toward a horizon that’s blanketed with more smoke and debris than the paved streets of gold so many brag of.
Life isn’t an emergency! Say it to the eyes in the rearview mirror. Tell it to the naked person stepping out of the shower in the morning. Like a martial artist perfecting the perfect front kick, it’s got to be done over and over again so that when you’re hit by a coworker or family members I need it now! You have the inner strength to endure the added pressure so that tonight you can survive the big fight.
I’ll never forget the doctor looking at me during the first visit to the hospital after the heart attack, he asked, “How many have you had so far?”
What? I’m 47! How many have I had? What’s the going rate? This is one gang I don’t want hit the streets with!
I don’t care how much you hate working out make it part of your plan; proper breathing techniques releases stress. I don’t care how many times a beer commercial tells you that life begins at a bar or at home in front of a game…the bigger the gut the more you can’t putt. Life isn’t an emergency. Sting and the Police didn’t sing every breath you take I’ll giving you something new to do.
Rediscover the Carolinas! Find new places to explore. There’s a lot more to our soil than the Civil War! Life isn’t an emergency.
The biggest disappointment I had about my heart attack had nothing to do with the doctor telling me something wasn’t right…the frickin ambulance didn’t turn on the siren. If my heart wasn’t emergency enough to crank up that monster…then why are you wasting so much time being unhappy at a place of work that legally has the right to treat you any way they want because you get insurance and health coverage?
Nobody but you can save you. I will always believe in you first.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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