Last year I was camping with my family and lots of friends. The little boys were having a great time running wild, and looking for creatures in the little creek.
At one point my 6 year old came running up to me, pants wet, covered with mud. (This picture is not from that incident, by the way. Apparently our stories about mud are plentiful.) Even though he had been warned that this could happen if he played by the creek, he seemed surprised and upset by it.
He REALLY wanted to change his clothes, but… I had failed to bring him a change of pants. Changing clothes was not an option.
After listening to him rant for a while about how terrible his situation was, I finally laid it out for him.
I said something like “Hey buddy. We don’t have any other pants. You are going to have to stay in these muddy ones. But you have some choices to make. You can either be really sad about that, and not have any more fun today, or you can just decide now to be happy about it, and keep playing and having fun. Either way your pants will still be muddy.”
He thought about it for just a minute, and then he made his choice. “I guess I’ll just be happy about it.” He went back to playing, and was actually having more fun, because he didn’t have to be careful about not getting his clothes muddy.
Our circumstances are sometimes really difficult to change. But we always get to choose how we want to respond to them! We can just skip the part about being upset and frustrated. We can skip the part about arguing with reality and wishing things were different.
My little Eli was such a great example of “flipping the switch.” Once he realized that his circumstances weren’t going to change, he just made the choice to embrace it all. He had a great day!
I wish I could always make the choice that easily! Sometimes it takes me a little longer to let things go… but I’m working on it! And it’s getting easier.
Is there a circumstance in your life that you are fighting against? What if you just decided to let it be there, and have a great day anyway?
Christi
