Success in Beating Traffic Blue

Like many people who drive their kids to schools, I used to experience lots of frustration doing that. My kids' school is some 10 km from my home. In the morning hours, it usually takes about 10 minutes drive to get to within half a kilometer from the school. It takes another 10 minutes from there to get my kids to the drop off point. Then another 15 minutes to get out, just to be stuck in the slow crawl getting out of school. One day last week, while just dropping off my kids, my mobile phone rang. I had to pull off and find somewhere to park my car to attend to the phone call, in case I have to make notes on the telephone discussion. When the telephone call was over after 15 minutes, I started my car to drive off. To my amazement, there was no more traffic jam. The road was cleared. Whilst it usually takes me 15 minutes to get out from the school drop off point, it took me just one minute on that day.

This accidental discovery has me thinking of a new strategy: To park my car somewhere after dropping my kids off every morning and to do something (such as go over my to do list for the day) whilst waiting for the traffic to clear, instead of being caught in frustration every morning.

I have been doing this for few months now, and I am very pleased with the success in beating traffics bule. Now I arrive in my office a few minutes later than usual in much better mood than before. Try this strategy if you are one of those who usually fumed at traffic jam.

Positive Self Talk

I came to realize that a lot of times we shot ourselves in a foot before we start a battle. The last week-end, I came back from an overseas trip and found a lot of paper work left on my desk from my few week's absence. The first response from the inner voice was : " What a mess!" This type of self blame, done without any awareness is detrimental, and it sets our sub-conscious mind into huge confusion. It results a fatalistic attitude so many people carry around. Fortunate for me, I was able to arrest such negative self-talk at the bud as I became aware of it. I immediately switched my self-talk into I could clear this mess bit by bit. I immediately started by completing one small task, just filing some papers away. That change of attitude and doing something about a negative situation gave me so much satisfaction and instituted a complete change of attitude from negative to positive, from powerless to powerful over a simple situation. So, I hope during the course of the next few weeks, I will arrest my own negative self-talks, and replace them with positive self talk. This simple change of attitude is truly energizing!!

Taking a small step

This is my first post, so I am unsure if there will be anyone who shares my thoughts. I am going to do it regardless. My first thought is success is taking a small step, such as this one. In life, there are little successes, there are great successes. One cannot expect great successes everyday. One can however set daily goals and take small steps to achieve little successes. This should be possible. For example, I set a goal to post my first blog today. After I have done this, I will give myself a pat on my shoulder, and consider it a goal achieved. The opposite would be procastinate and not do this, then when the day is over, I will be left with a feeling of failure.

If I keep up with the blogger, sooner or later there will be a treasure-trove on thoughts on successes. It will mean something to me. It means that I am consistent, and I have overcome the fear of failure-what if someone reads this and laughs at me. Indeed, it is not easy to start this blog, I have been thinking about it for some time. Now, at least it is here-a small step has been taken, a small success has been achieved.