Sometimes a New Perspective Can Be Benefical

Over Thanksgiving I was talking to a family friend Charley Ford, who also happens to be my old 6th grade teacher and volleyball coach. He was without a doubt my most influential teacher and I have always had a great deal of respect for him. When he was my teacher we had to read these books on values. Each of these books had a topic like "persistence", "integrity", "attitude", "responsibility" etc. There were probably about 15-20 of them and we had to write a report about how they apply to our lives after we were done with each book. This is something that has always stayed with me and we still have chats about these types of things even today.

Well over Thanksgiving he gave me a book to read, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". Having read a great deal of self help books when I was in grad school that focused on organizational effectiveness I didn't really have any high ideals of how this may benefit me. I gave it a shot though and although there is no ground-breaking completely new information, it has been helping me to take a closer look at my own paradigms and how I approach the world.

Where I have seen the most relevance is in my job. I have a horrible attitude when it comes to work, blaming frequently and pawning my unhappiness off on other people. This may not be my dream job but it is the job that I have now so why be miserable when I can change my attitude instead of just reacting negatively. It may not solve all of my problems but maybe it will prevent me from being so negative and at times feeling sorry for myself for no good reason. I have always thought of myself as a happy person but if I die tomorrow, I dont know if thats what people would say about me. That makes me sad, so I am going to work on it.

(And no this does not mean sarcastic, smart ass Kasey is going anywhere, she will definitely still be around-I just want to change the way I react when things don't go my way so I dont let it effect me as much as it does now)