Loving Every Moment!

                                                         compliments of soda.com

I was standing at the bakery counter in my local Jusco supermarket last Sunday when the malay lady next to me who appeared to be frustrated at the momentary wait to have her kaya puff and croissant packed, exclaimed to another woman beside her at the counter, “I hate the weekends!”  I stood there and thought to myself, that’s funny, why would someone hate weekends, perhaps she loathed the endless queues at the mall, but the more I thought about it, the more I could understand why she would say what she did. Weekdays for many people are a day of tasks, some people get up early go to church, have a big breakfast or dimsum brunch, go grocery shopping, clean house, do laundry, mow the lawn, cook a big dinner and get ready for another work week. Those who work a  six-day- workweek with only a day off on Sunday, the task seems even more arduous. My Saturdays are days of playing catch up, either with housework, whilst my Sundays are for family and friends. .  If you have school age children, Sunday can often be homework surprise day. So, yes, whilst I couldn't fully comprehend why this woman was not very excited about weekends in general, I could certainly empathize the possibility of the mount of tasks that she had to accomplish on the day God took a deserved rest, sit back and be praised.

Fyi, I felt Anton Almighty too, since I had a carefree wonderful morning last Sunday for a rare hiking cum picnic trip. ^_^

Although I understand her displeasure with Sundays and what that day of the week often brings with it, I am disturbed by what is represented here. This woman did what many people do, she assigned a negative value to that day. Many people do this with Mondays. We often here people say, “I hate Mondays” or “Monday Blues”, etc. When we assign a negative value to a particular day or event, we predispose our perception of that day or event. In other words, if I say, “I hate Mondays”, then I have set my perception, my lens, if you will, to focus on things that will support my belief that Mondays are awful and that I have valid reasons to make the statement that I hate Mondays. When I do this, I develop tunnel vision, I see what I expect to see, in this instance, all things that make Mondays bad and I blind myself to all of the positive aspects of that day.

We get what we expect! The reason we get what we expect is because that is what we tune ourselves into receive.

Most of us our guilty of assigning negative values to all kinds of things, days of the week, holidays, meetings, family vacations, visits from certain relatives, etc. When we do this, we set ourselves up to not enjoy the day or event for we will most likely only see what we expect to see.

                                           compliments of http://stacysbigpicture.typepad.com


The next time you hear yourself assigning a negative value to a day or event, STOP! Become aware of what you are doing, choose to ask yourself how can you be a positive influence on the day/event? What thoughts and actions can you bring to the day/event that will make the day/event a positive experience.

Many times, this can be very simple. If you are dreading a visit from your great Aunt KimChi, ask yourself what is it about Aunt KimChi’s visits that you dread? You may find out that you dread her visit because she always rambles and rants. Now, recall, what does she complain about? She complains that the living room is too warm and that you never have her favorite egg tart, Tong Kee. She complains about the kind of food you serve her, that the "chee keok chou" pork leg vinegar was not gingerly-spicy nor tangy enough to satisfy her tastebuds. Now that you have made yourself aware of what she complains about, you can choose to do something about this. You get some extra nice Penang "cap keretapi" coffee for the duration of her visit and you call her and plan out a menu together for her visit. You have just eliminated the part of her visit that you dread! You are now positioned to have a wonderful visit and enjoy her visit.

You can apply this simple exercise to any day or event. Now, you may be saying, well, I can’t change Mondays at work. Monday’s are a very busy day with high demands. This is true, you may not be able to change certain aspects of your day, however what you can change is how you perceive the events of a Monday. You can choose to find ways to make Monday a better day for yourself and everyone you touch. It could be treating yourself to an indulgent breakfast or even as simple as stopping by the roadside stall on the way into work and bringing in a few packets of nasi lemak to share or malay kuihs for everyone’s coffee break. I simply choose to tuck myself into bed earlier on my Sunday nights and wake up fresh on Mon morn for a quiet prayer, prepare my weekly positive sms message to send out to my loved ones and especially leaving the house earlier to beat the heavy traffic on the PJ roads, thus eliminating the early morning stress of cursing at those rude motorists who shamelessly weave their way through traffic, often at our expense.

The key is that you can choose not to assign negative values and to take actions to change how you perceive the day or event.

Waking up healthy every day is a blessing! Every day is an opportunity to be joyful, to spread love and peace. Every day is full of lessons waiting for us to learn!

Love the day your in, love the events and the people in your life who mean so much to you! Fill them with shameless love and you will overflow with joy for each day that you have!

"Walk on a trail of loving kindness

Walk on a path of compassion

And all else around you will be beautiful."

Every Blessing