All Things Transcription

Everyone has problems and sometimes these problems can seem to be overwhelming. Life can seem to be like a continuous circle of small irritations and unbelievable turmoil. Everyday we run into molehills that can turn into mountains in the blink of an eye. So what do you do to keep your head up day after day against these odds?

Follow up:

Count your blessings.

No matter what your religious persuasion, if you are religious at all, there are things that happen to us everyday that can be counted as blessings. Granted, there are days that it may be hard to find those blessings. They may be so small that they are almost invisible without a microscope. However, they are there. You just have to learn to look for them.

Searching for these things may seem to a gargantuan task at fist. It’s just like every other task, though. Practice makes perfect. If you get into the habit of taking the time out each day to think about this subject, you will find that it becomes easier to come up with numerous things that can be considered blessings. When you have a hard day, take a few minutes to sit down and look for just one thing that happened to you today that counts as a blessing. Just one teeny little thing, that’s all you have to do to interject a little joy into your day.

Maybe you hit all green traffic lights on your commute to work. Perhaps someone held the door for you while you were juggling stuff in each hand. It could just be that a perfect stranger was having a good day and shared that with you by smiling at you. Think hard. You can always come up with something.

I am a fairly simple person. I can find many things that bring me joy. I surround myself with those things when I can and I search them out everywhere I go. I do try to practice this everyday. Yes, I will admit that this is hard sometimes. However, I really do try my best to remember to do this on a regular basis even on the worst days.

I attempt to share these simple things with people when I can. I have been known to drag people kicking and screaming to see the obvious things that bring me happiness. I worked in retail clothing for a long time. This is a really stressful job. Working with the public can be very trying. So occasionally I would get on the PA and call all my girls to the front of the store that weren’t actively helping a customer and have them come outside to look at the sunset. The store front faced west and there was a clear view that was often breathtaking.

Something interesting happened. At first, I knew that they thought I was completely nuts. Some of them were irritated that I had called them away from their work just for that. Most of them just wanted to get done and go home. Some of them didn’t pay much attention to the sunset, they were just glad to get an unscheduled break out of me. They were either tapping their feet and ignoring it, or goofing with their friends and ignoring it. I would wait a couple of minutes and then say, “Okay, that’s all I wanted to show you.” Off they would go without much consideration of the beautiful sky I had wanted them to see.

However, the next time I did this I noticed that a couple of them actually looked at the sky, so I added some comments about the wonderful colors. I noticed that the ones who were paying attention visibly relaxed and smiled. This phenomena spread to others so that each consecutive time I did this it produced identical results. The girls felt better, were happier, and were more cooperative with each other the rest of the shift. It didn’t work for all of them, but I feel that I shared a little joy with the ones that learned to appreciate it.

My point is, once you learn to look for the blessings in your life that you can often share the joy they bring you. This in turn creates another blessing for you. You may often find that the people you try to share these things with aren’t really open to the experience. So many people refuse to find anything positive in life and you may not have much influence on this attitude. However, if you make just one person have a better day by giving them a smile because you counted your blessings and it made you happy, you have done a good deed. Try it, you’ll like it. I promise.

This is my blessing today:

Happy 15th Anniversary to my husband! I think he is just the most wonderful man in the whole wide world and I don’t know what I would do without him!

Smarmy I know, but he always makes me laugh! You know what they say:

Laughter is the best medicine!