Pay Attention

The other night I went to Wal Mart kind of late to pick up some stuff, and to get out of the house.  The woman who rang up my groceries was about my age.  It was almost ten o'clock.  We had a conversation that went sort of like this:

"You much be ready to go home," I said.

"Yes.  But when you think about it, who does want to be working, late at night,  away from their families and their homes?"

"True," I said.  "And then you must get some customers that are hard to deal with."

"It's really not so bad," she said.  "People are nice.  The people I work with are nice.  It's a good place to work.  Sometimes, people just have a hard time and they're going to be in a bad mood.  As long as you understand that every now and then, you're going to get someone like that, then it's okay."

I LOVED her attitude.  She had every reason to be in a foul mood herself.  She was working late, had been on her feet all day, and was obviously tired.  But her perspective changed everything!  She had made a conscious decision to view her job and the people she came across in that job in a certain way, and she was better off for it.

In the past few years I have found that this applies to many things in life.  It's easy to get up in the morning and complain, and to express our unhappiness over things that aren't quite going the way we want them to.  It's challenging to take a less than desirable situation and turn it into something that can be enjoyed or at least make you content.  But it can be done.  How do you do this?  How do you change your attitude?

The biggest tool I use for this is prayer.  Because God has an eternal perspective, praying about a situation can actually give you peace.  If you're going through a trial, praying can ease your mind and help you to remove yourself from the "here and now" of the problem and look at it from a distance.  This is also useful in solving problems that arise in your life.  It keeps you cool headed.  It helps you act after thinking, not act without thinking.

The other major tool that can help you is empathy.  Stop and switch places with someone.  Being with Logan and witnessing his struggles with communication and behavior has taught me that when someone is acting a certain way, there is always a reason.  Whatever that reason may be...I try to think about the person I'm dealing with and understand their behavior. Sometimes there's an explanation.  Sometimes not.  But either way, you are still accountable for how you are acting towards them.

As I write this Logan is sitting in a rocking chair next to me, pushing on my arm with his foot and yelling (or "singing" as he sometimes tries to call it.)  It's annoying.  But he's telling me something.  He's saying, Stop writing, mom, and look at me.  Pay attention.