Sunday, May 9, 2010

An Unplanned Life

An embarrassing thing happened to me the other day.

I did a good deed - a boy scout type thing.

That's not the embarrassing part.  The embarrassing part was that I noticed.  I thought, "Hey, I just did a good deed."

This is not how it is supposed to happen.  Maybe it is better said, "This is not how I want it to happen with me."  I think of myself as a good person; a nice guy that is always willing to help.  However, if that was really true, I don't think it would be so noticeable to me when I do a good deed.

Part one was the embarrassment.

But there was more.  I realized that I had been lagging in the good deed category.  At the same time, it felt good to do something nice for someone else.  I actually got an unsolicited return of "feeling good about myself" for doing something for someone else.  I immediately sought out another good deed to do.  I wanted to feel good about myself and I didn't want to be such a stranger to the event.

Here is the deal - for me.  I am not at a place where being good deeder comes as spontaneously as I would like.  To compensate for this, I have a plan.  I maintain a spread sheet of things I want to do every day.  I have added "Do a good deed" to that list.  Perhaps with practice, I will start to approach being the person I want to be in this regard.

I have noticed that there are a lot of things that I can control in my life if I make a conscious effort.  For example, I know I am going to have a bad day from time to time.  If I wait for this to happen and then try to find my way out of it, I am going to fail.  It's like falling overboard and then thinking, "Maybe its time to learn to swim."  When I am smart, and I am almost never smart, I plan ahead.  I know I will have a bad day so I make sure I have a list of things I can do or think about that will help me get out of the funk.

If you have read some of my blogs, you make remember that I have written about this before.

That's okay.  Writing about it is all part of my preparation.  When fear or worry grips me, I know where the path to the light lies.  I know because I marked it ahead of time.

Happy Mothers Day to all of you moms out there.   I have a great mom.  I had a great mother-in-law who died way too early.  I now have another mother-in-law and she is great.


http://www.worldgratitudelist.com   Leave a list.  Read a list.  Be happy.

j

No comments:

Post a Comment