Yesterday after my kid’s soccer practice, I took my 7-year old son to get a haircut. On the drive home, my son starts whining, complaining about his haircut, my 5-year old daughter is sitting beside him and she starts crying because my son won’t stop whining. Next, my son decides to hit his sister and she cries even louder. This goes on for a good five minutes, at this point my son starts screaming at the top of his lungs… I feel my frustration turn into anger, I want to yell at the kids and tell them to “Shuuuut-up!” but instead I breathe… focus on THEIR feelings and I make it about them. I shift my perception and take my attention off of how I’m feeling, I stop thinking about how I want them to behave and instead I put my attention on them, focus on how THEY feel and I look at how I can HELP them.
Rather than going into an old stimulus and response pattern, I CHOSE to interrupt the pattern and respond with Love. Much easier said than done, this has been my intention for many years, and it is finally sinking into the being level. It took a while for this intellectual concept to fully integrate into who I really am at the core, but it was well worth the effort. The intention to be better, to improve and to grow as a person is slowly starting to manifest and I’m very happy with the results.
Rather than reacting to the kids, I chose to visualize my son’s consciousness as a ball of white light and I directed compassion and acceptance towards his consciousness… and guess what? He stopped screaming, calmed down and my kids enjoyed the rest of the car ride home.
Moral of the story? It’s not about changing others… It all comes down to YOU and how you CHOOSE to respond to the situation. One of my favorite quotes from Wayne Dyer is this: “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” I witnessed this firsthand in our car ride home.
We create our reality, we get to choose the movie we immerse ourselves in for a lifetime. What is the title of your movie? Some might unconsciously choose to experience “Hardship and Pain” but once we know that we have the power to change the movie, we can put on “Happiness and Joy.” The characters may remain the same, the plot may shift a little, but the genre completely changes from horror to inspiration, drama to comedy. Everything feels a lot “lighter” life becomes much better; people, places and events all come together in a kind of magical way.
So next time you find yourself in a car with whining kids, or in an argument with your spouse, a disagreement with your boss/colleague/friend, or any type of situation that you wish were different, just remember; you are the director of your movie, what type of film are you choosing to produce?