Little Miss ProActive

And no, I don't mean the Diddy endorsed acne product. This stems from a conversation I had with Poats a few weeks back. I was having a bad day and she passed along a pearl of wisdom she had learned from one of her management books. Simply put...choose your attitude.

The premise is deceptively elementary. If you choose to be in a good mood and not let trivial things bother you, they won't. You have complete control over how you choose to react to things. Let them bother you or don't. It's as easy as that.

I think this book failed to take into account the fact that I am a woman and an emotional one at that. You mean to tell me I have the ability to CONTROL those crazy feelings? This was a concept more foreign to me then people who own less then 5 pairs of shoes. Black shoes at that.

But I found the notion to be an interesting one. One that required a little more in-depth analysis…McDougall style. Which is to say I needed to take this idea and massage it into something I can relate to.

I decided first that I needed to expand the scope of the definition. I can’t just encompass emotion…happy, sad, angry, frustrated. I needed more flexibility if I was going to make this work for me.

I thought about the last two months of my life and what I had been up to. I started to compile a list to reflect accomplishments, failures, activities and any other changes or drama that was causing my emotions to careen wildly and affect my ability to choose and control them.

Here was my quick draft:

1. Crossed skydiving off life To Do list
2. Got a new job
3. Applied and got accepted to an MBA program
4. Knocked 25 minutes of last year’s half marathon time
5. Got a new hair color

I looked at my short list critically and realized something. I did all of these things by myself. Without freaking out, leaving the country or having any more emotional or mental breakdowns about the state of my life. I was being proactive. And I was taking steps toward making myself happy.

Then the light bulb went on. Maybe I can’t control whether I am happy or sad at a specific point in time but when I feel those feeling creep up on me, I can focus on what I have been able to accomplish.

I am a total bad ass. That is the attitude I choose. And don’t I look happy about it?