I call this one “Couldn’t even have my freakin’ Egg McMuffin.”

Yes, I’m well aware that I don’t need an Egg McMuffin, but I wanted one.  Had two new clients, a slight case of the blues lately due to slow growth came to an end, It was a nice day and I even got up early!  My son got up early too for his first day of orientation at his first job.  I wanted to make sure he didn’t sleep in after yelling at Call of Duty late into the night. So I figured, “hey, I’m gonna get to the office early, get me an Egg McMuffin and an orange juice, (notice, I left the grease soaked hashbrown out before you judge me 😉), and relax while knocking out some notes.  Easy peasy, right?!!

               Got in the car earlier than I planned, going good!  Then it dawned on me, my son took my car, which has my office keys in it…….  Irritating, two options: call my buddy to see if he’ll be in (and risk waking him on Easter Eve), or drive to Washington, almost 30 minutes out of my way.  I drove to Washington.  No problem, I’ll swap out the keys, find another route to the office, and swing by a Micky D’s on the way there!  Crisis averted.  I run inside, get my other set of keys with my car key on it, wake the wife to find them in the process.

               Cruising to Washington, I look down and see the “idiot light” is on.  (That’s blue-collar slang meaning you’re an idiot if you need an alarm to keep gas in your car.  Not my belief, as I rely on the idiot light a lot.) D@#$, one more stop.  Arrive in Washington, get my office keys from my car, look up the quickest route, it's 15 minutes longer than expected and straight through all the “strictly enforced 25mph” neighborhoods.  Well, not going to get there without gas, so we’ll have to skip that tasty Egg McMuffin.

               Pick the shortest route, and head toward the office, looking for a gas station on my side of the road, then I spot a Sheetz!  Alright!  It won’t be a Micky D’s, but they always have some hot “grab n go” premade Egg Muffins that are ultra messy but yummy.   Pull in, throw a quick $15 in the tank cause the pumps are slow, head inside, grab a coffee (needed that more at this point), swing over to the grab and go heat rack……..and Nutz.   We have 4 packages of heated seasoned peanuts, about 4 days old.  The rest of the rack is empty.   Lines for MTO are too long, so I go poor choice and grab a pack of doughnut sticks and head out.  Managed to get to the office with about 5 minutes to spare.

               So my client load was a little stacked, but that means growth and I must be helping on some level.  (see my use of reframing)  The old me would have allowed the realization that my office keys were in the car my son took to snowball into a stressful day of being anger and feeling like everything works against me.  That’s changed, at each annoying event, I take a moment and reflect on how allowing myself to get pissed off is not going to do anything to help take my day back or make it better.  At each step, I pushed out the nonproductive thoughts and explored my options and my resources.  (my car, I have time , I have someone I can call, these are resources and options).  Focusing on how “nothing goes right for me” does nothing to provide a path around the barrier to a good day.  (Cognitive distortion, more on those later) I also remind myself that these are not big catastrophes and are not necessarily going to result in one…..even a bunch of them combined (I’m changing my responses here, we have a choice in how we respond.) 

               Not getting my Egg McMuffin and having to settle for a coffee and doughnut sticks was not a “problem”.  I didn’t like it, but that doesn't mean it’s a problem or bad.

               I worked with my clients successfully, nothing horrible happened.  At the end of the day, I took some time to reflect on these events and what happened as well as how I responded.  Despite not going as planned, I managed my day and didn’t allow any of the things I just wrote about to ruin it or influence the rest of my day.  As I said, the old me would have allowed crap to start rolling downhill as soon as I realized I didn’t have my office keys, each speed bump after that would have just elevated my temper.  Screw that, it's no way to live your life.  It hurts you and makes everyone around you miserable. It also teaches those that look up to you to handle things in an unproductive and damaging manner.