|
Today's
Meditation:
One of
the reasons I like to walk to work is that doing so allows
me to think over the day to come. At the last place
I lived, the walk helped me immensely. I was
teaching high school in a public school, and I found
myself walking to school feeling loads of stress-- did I
have enough materials? How were the students going
to react? Were they going to learn what they needed
to learn? And on and on and on.
But
one day during the walk I told myself, "Hold
on. You're going to spend a day with a whole bunch
of wonderful young people who are coming to school to try
to learn, to grow, and become something better. You
get a chance to talk with them, to help them, to teach
them, to enjoy their company." And with that
thought, my perspective of my "work" changed
dramatically. I've always appreciated the benefits
of teaching, of course, and I've loved doing it, but I
still had a bit of a negative perspective of the
"work" involved because of the demands put on
teachers by administrators, fellow teachers, and problem
students.
When
I saw the "work" in a different way, though, I
was able to walk to school looking forward to seeing the
kids that day. I knew there would be problems, but I
know from experience that I'm quite capable of dealing
with problems effectively and rather easily. I know
how to do the job well, and failure wasn't ever really an
option or a possibility-- I could relax and go to work
knowing that I was well equipped and prepared for the
day. When that happened, the work day was also much
more positive, which made coming to work the next day even
less stressful of an idea.
How
we approach things is the greatest contributor to how
things come out, usually. Yes, there can be people
at work who cause problems to spiral out of control, and
there can be situations at work that are truly unbearable
no matter how positive our approach to them. For the
most part, though, our work can be a very positive part of
our lives, and we can make it even more positive by the
ways that we approach it.
|
