what do these things have in common?
liver biopsy slide showing giant cell hepatitis[i think!??]
current favorite tv show
both are reasons that i am already one giant mug of coffee and one double espresso deep at 6:28 am. good morning to you, too!
i got up at an unmentionable hour today to finish [fine, and start] a powerpoint presentation that i have to give this evening to a consortium of pediatric endocrinology peeps from duke, UNC, and wake med. this is not usually how i roll when it comes to projects like this [this is!]. but as i mentioned yesterday, the weekend took a rather unexpected turn and i had to spend my sunday doing something more important than reading journal articles.
this morning when the alarm went off at [censored] o’clock, i checked my work email and saw that of course our ICU was now filled with endocrine patients. i thought to myself: “well, $#@&* OF COURSE. you know, i have every excuse to be miserable today.”
and then i could have earned this awesome certificate
but then i realized: i could also choose not to be.
and it probably would make everyone else around me happier.
and it would probably be just as easy.
and it would probably be more fun!
plus, as leo babauta quoted yesterday:
maybe this father of 6 knows something i don’t . . . KIDDING. [sort of.]
summer retreat day 20: let chaos in today
your retreat mission today is to work on being okay — even happy! — with what is, even if does not conform to plans you may have made. this is quite timely, because personally, this week is going nothing like i envisioned it.
✔ i still haven’t gone grocery shopping
✔ i had to get up at an obscene hour to do a project that ‘should have been done’ earlier [who says?]
✔ i didn’t get to work out yesterday
but, there have been positive surprises, too:
♥ finding a new favorite tv show [above] that josh likes too!
♥ an impromptu and very necessary trip to the neighborhood ben & jerry’s
♥ finding FLOW while making my slides this AM — even before sunrise
writing
think about the various plans and goals you have set in your mind for the week, and then consider what would happen if you HAD to do something else that was more important. when things are chaotic, what truly emerges as necessity? what are your best ways of coping?
reading
✔ zen habits chaos and the illusion of control
✔ the art of misery [same source as the ‘certificate’ above — i liked what this life coach had to say!]
meditation
5 minutes — preferably right around the time that something is NOT going the way that you had expected.
mini-assignment
try to be aware today of your own illusions of control, and if possible — break free of the guilt/stress/angst that you may have when you find things not moving along exactly according to plan. you may have an ideal day in mind [i encouraged you to think about it, after all!] — but real life is not perfect. how we deal with the interface between what ‘should’ and what IS — well, that’s pretty much everything.
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