It's always a choice

I was up at 6 am this morning. I love getting up fully rested and early enough to enjoy the day before everyone else wakes up. I decided to go out and weed the garden beds this morning. It’s so peaceful to be out there with the birds chirping, the sun making its way through all the leaves of the trees and a little chill in the air. It was such an awesome meditation; me and the dirt. I didn’t even wear any gloves because I wanted to get the full experience of my hands being in the soil. It’s such a grounding experience.

I have been thinking about the title of this post for a while now. I think in blogs all the time but they take a while to jell in my head before I can write them and it jelled while weeding. The thought behind this blog is “choose not to get offended.” My friend was telling me the other day about how some of her friends and family were annoying her. I told her to make the choice of not getting offended. She had to think about that for a while and how she would go about doing that. I truly find that thought liberating. Sometimes we waste so much time worrying about what someone meant or why they did something when it’s really nothing to do with us and everything to do with them.

It seems like I’ve been playing a lot of tennis lately. I play on a mixed doubles league which I love because I get to play with my hubby. A friend of mine got paired with a person she didn’t know before but heard all sorts of things about his behavior on the court being very poor. I was asking her about it the other day when she responded that whenever he does display bad behavior she pays no attention to it because she realized that was how he processed the game and it really wasn’t about her at all. So many other people chose to get offended by his behavior where she decided to let it be. The result is that they have won every match they’ve ever played together because she plays her game and has allowed him to play his.

It’s really never about the other person anyway. Whenever someone evokes in us feelings of anger, aggravation or anything else the question we need to ask ourselves is “why did that affect me?” If you stop to ask yourself that question you’ll realize it’s because you were tired or you need to set the boundary with them or whatever. It’s always going to be about adjusting your behavior if you got offended. There are times when we need to deal with people differently and when a person aggravates us then it’s up to us to make that change.

Choose to be free of other people’s actions, opinions, choices and thoughts. Choose to be about what makes you happy and live life that way. Trust me you will feel extremely liberated and much happier.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this post. You may leave a comment below, email me to mary@marysalfi.com or find me on Facebook by becoming a fan of marysalfi.com

The choice is to be happy!
Mary