So I may be thinking about shifting careers away from massage therapy (shhhhh). I’d stay within the health care field but move into an administrative setting. I’ve been excited and hopeful about a change, until yesterday when I didn’t respond to an email from a friend who I’m writing an article for (let me explain the correlation…). I forgot to get back to her for a few days and her new magazine will be coming out soon and she was worried I didn’t get her email. As soon as my friend texted me I responded back that I had got her email and everything is on track. But I felt bad for leaving her hanging and not getting back to her.
Whoa, that was a flash forward into a future administrative job. Office jobs are all about communicating with people and getting back to them and corresponding. The expectations are WAY more involved than those of a massage therapist. Honestly, In my current job I don’t need to multi-task, or juggle a schedule. I massage one person at a time in a calm dark room.
So I was stressing about forgetting things and not keeping track of my schedule very well all day. I was trying to keep my head above water about it, but it turned into an ugly “you’re a bad person because you can’t keep a schedule” mantra in my head pretty quickly. When I went to sleep last night I was still feeling crummy until I realized, why don’t I just buy an agenda and keep track of my schedule? My iphone calendar does not jive with the way my brain functions; I need to see a full month laid out at once and I need to be able to pencil in changes in a second. I need a paper calendar book!
EUREKA! I could handle this! I could make a change and no longer be “a bad person who can’t keep a schedule”! I could navigate the administrative world and not let my friends down! phew! But why didn’t a possible solution come to mind in the first place?! I felt like I was getting angry at some old piece of technology that was in serious need of an upgrade. Amy’s thinking needs an upgrade!
Seriously, it needs an upgrade. I can remember back to when I was a kid and I saw one of those deals “4 books for 1$” and somehow (I can’t remember if you needed a credit card) I signed up for it and got a bunch of Dr. Seuss books!.. But then they kept sending me more books. And they’d send me a bill for the books… It was more than a dollar. And I felt so bad and ashamed. I didn’t have any money, and I felt gullible for being suckered into the deal. I hid the books from my parents but they noticed after about the 3rd shipment of books. I got in trouble, of course. I remember back then feeling what happened was an example of how foolish and silly I was. There was no space for telling myself that I was a kid and I didn’t know there was small print in those one-dollar deals. I could have gone and showed my parents right from the beginning and we could have laughed about the situation and wisely skipped the whole HMV buy 6 CD’s for 1$ era that came right afterwards. But instead I created a habit in myself of guilt and shame.
I can’t change the past, but I can change my habit now. I am now going to realize every time I feel shameful that there is a solution somewhere. I might not be able to go back in time and respond to my friend’s email sooner, but I can prevent late emails in the future by buying an agenda. I might not be able to return those Dr. Seuss books I bought way back when, but I can learn to call and cancel an order earlier before it becomes a bigger issue. I think I’ll be ok in the administrative world. Fingers crossed.
Step to happiness #25… habits can be changed.
Happiness in 3 Steps 