My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate. ~ Thornton Wilder

Just a Happy Day

It’s been a rough few days, the fact is humanity has been kicking my ass, the uncertainty of what will happen with the next administration, returning to work and finally just dealing with the selfishness and impatience of humanity has really beat on me.

As I have preached on this blog for years, when you’re off you need to go back to basics, exercise, eat well, get enough sleep. That’s what I’ve been working on doing. It takes a couple of days to really have an impact and I woke up feeling pretty good today. I had a meeting to go to down near the airport that I really didn’t want to attend, it was kind of being dumped on me and my expectations were low. Currently I have to park on the top of the hill away from my apartment while they do seismic retrofits on our parking area in front of my building. So as I walked out this morning, the jack hammering had stopped, and when I hit the base of the stairs I quickly saw why. The trench they had dug to set the steel beam was being jack hammered out and they had jack hammered into the main water line. The two foot deep trench was full, water was bubbling in the middle like a fountain and guys we’re running around excitedly. I looked at a worker and said, “that’s not good.” He smiled, “no, no it’s not.” I got to my meeting and had to wait at security for over ten minutes before they came to get me. But that left me standing in the parking lot, looking out over the San Francisco Bay on a beautiful sunny morning watching geese fly into the bay, fantastic.

The meeting turned out to be really good. The folks I were meeting with were really competent and forward thinking, they even had reasonable timeline expectations for the projecct we’re contemplating putting together, it was great. Then as I was leaving they asked me about some other things I’d mentioned and I ended up picking up two potential side gigs and a management coaching client. So all in all a really great meeting.

I then had a coaching session with one of my favorite clients this afternoon and we had a really fantastic session. I had a great lunch and got in a short walk in campus. A couple of draggy afternoon meetings and then I made a decision. It had been such a good day I decided to reward myself and picked up ice cream on the way home and made a wonderful root beer float to celebrate a really good day.

It’s important when you’re not feeling great to take action. Address the triggers that you know impact your mood, lack of sleep is probably the number one trigger that I know tanks my mood. But action is important and finally, it really matters to celebrate good things. Even if it’s just a minor thing like a good day after a rough time, celebrate, be happy, this is your one and only life. Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane