Food for Thought Monday.

I hope everyone had a great weekend!!! Those of you who were very close or in the path of the tornadoes, my prayers and thoughts are with you and your families!

I've shared with you before that I work for a great company that creates jobs for people with disabilities whether they're cognitive, mental or physical. Honestly, for the past month, I've had really shitty and busy days at work, I go home exhausted and almost in tears because I have to deal with a lot of stuff that like in every company, other people have to deal with as well, but it's so tiring. Aside from being busy, what gets me the most tired about work is drama. As I said, I know everyone deals with this regardless of where they work, but I for one, am not very good at dealing with these kinds of things. I don't need them in my life, I don't want them. I firmly believe that people who love drama cause drama and they love it. It follows them.

Anyway, I would get home and unload it on Jack and he would sit there and listen and I would listen to myself and think, why do I even put myself in these situations? Why do I let it affect me so much? Although I cannot stop it, I can remove myself from these situations and be at peace with myself. Or try to.

This Saturday I had to work for a couple of hours to attend a conference for parents that have children with disabilities. Being that I was exhausted and kind of annoyed with work, I'm not going to lie, I was hesitant about having to work on the weekend. I got up and got ready and left Jack and Elliot to go to this thing. I got there and went to our table and met up with our recruiter and counselors.

I'll say one thing, I was EXTREMELY happy to be there. There's nothing like seeing parents with their sons and daughters going around talking to us about opportunities for them. They want to find a way to make their kids successful in life as we all yearn for our own. We also had to do a presentation for the parents on what our company does and the training we offer for our employees. There was a father there that had a twenty-two year old son who suffered from seizures since the age of five. I talked about our training and what we have to offer and how we would accommodate his son. He told us his story and how his son, because of the seizures, had a teenager's learning ability. He said that his son could go days if not months without a seizure and other times they were frequent. He always has to be accompanied by someone in case he suffered from one. I had a knot in my throat the entire time because here he was, with a son that would finish high school in a year, him an older man, looking for employment for his adult son.

I quickly realized how fortunate and blessed I am to have a job where we help people with disabilities (I don't like that word because everyone has an ability), from young adults to veterans, older men & women. It hit me. Right there it hit me. How could I be so selfish and think about how I had a bad day at work for the last month and here was this man and all he wanted was to make sure his son was cared for and had a future? He wanted to leave him set for life before his time came. Before he no longer could look out for his son's well being. Something we all want for ourselves and our kids anyway and sometimes take for granted right?

It was this particular situation that brought me back down and made me plant my feet well and hard on the ground again. It made my job seem so easy and it erased all the pressure and made me forget about the bad days. I left there thinking how you can be having the shittiest day at work (in your mind) or wherever and one thing like this makes all that go away. You come back down to earth and feel thankful that it was only one month worth of shitty days, and how really, it's not as bad as you think. Or even bad at all. Other people go through way worse things and treat life no different than us, they're thankful everyday. We are so quick to go to that bad place sometimes over the most meaningless things that we really don't set our minds and hearts straight and we need moments and situations like these. I am thankful for the experience that I had that day. I was happy to meet this man and glad that hopefully we can make his son's life better, even if it's just at work.

This might be somewhat extreme or may seem minimal to some but it makes you think. I know it made me sit down and think about the way I think about things sometimes, even if that sounds redundant ha.

We are so close to Thanksgiving and my approach to things has definitely changed. If you think minimal things in your life are bad, look again, sit down and think about it. Is it really that bad? Do you really think the world is closing down on you? I bet you by the time you get up again your view of things will change.

I love this quote, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” - Dr Wayne Dyer

I'll leave you with a pic of my Button.

Have a great Monday!