 |
| Photo by Rick Hustead |
This evening when I was checking my social-media accounts, I came across
an evocative post that described various incidents that prevented a handful of
individuals from getting to work at the World Trade Center
on September
11, 2001. In one case, someone’s car wouldn’t start so the individual never
made it to the office at all. In another, a child didn’t get ready for school
in time; his tardiness meant that a parent was also late for work in order to get the child to class. One person’s
alarm didn’t go off in time. Another decided to take a call (rather than let it
go to voice-mail) before heading out to work. And so on.
I bet most if not all of the people described in that post was silently
or verbally cursing whatever (or whoever) was causing the frustration and delay. How long did
it take until news of the first airline crashing into the Twin Towers turned
that frustration into gratitude and relief?
Reading about these scenarios reminded me of times in the past when I have
rushed to attend an event or complete a project, only to be stopped in my
tracks by circumstances beyond my control. Back then, I am sure that my
frustration and even anger would have been palpable. But since then I have come to appreciate these
uncontrollable events—including traffic jams or having to rewrite most of a
document because I forgot to save it before the computer crashed. As Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., liked to advise, it
is always possible to take a negative experience and “turn it around” to become
a positive one. Who knows what challenge I might have faced a few miles up the
freeway if that big-rig hadn’t stalled out on the hill? Or, having completed
writing a new draft of the document I lost, I realized that the current version
is much better after all. Come to think of it, I can think about several
occasions in which a delay, a wrong turn or a mistake have resulted in a much
better outcome for having experienced those inconveniences. It’s something to
think about.
If you are interested in reading
the original Facebook post I described at the beginning of this essay, you can
check it out at https://www.facebook.com/Calminsense-Hypnotherapy-183965798312732/.
Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist
based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation
Institute in 2005. For more
information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an
appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
© 2016
