Finding Good In The Bad
I realize I haven't written something in forever and a half in here, but something happened tonight that I wanted to share. This evening I got a call from my dad, so is a traveling salesman for a trucks parts company. By traveling, I don't mean state to state, but on a weekly and sometimes daily basis, he's on the road for hours at a time traveling all over the state of Illinois and also into the St. Louis area.
Anyway, I got a call from him that his van broke down in a city roughly 1.5 hours away. In my family we've been struck with a lot of bad vehicle trouble for some reason. But ya know, when it rains it pours! Haha. The ridiculous thing is that this SAME THING happened roughly a month ago to a DIFFERENT van we own, only in that instance he was stranded 2.5 hours away.
Both times, I have been the knight in shining van armor to go rescue him from these places. And I'll admit, it's been a MAJOR pain, since it's such a long drive there and back, and both times have been in the late evening-and one being through a thunderstorm.
However, my purpose for this post is NOT to complain. I'll admit that when I heard I would be making the trek to get him, I was peeved because I had to stop watching Netflix lol. However, he is my Dad, and I love him, and I know that if the situation was turned that he would drop everything and do the same for me. But, I was in the middle of binging Lost on Netflix!! Can you blame me!? Haha. Anyway, that annoying feeling was quickly outweighed by another thought: This is a GREAT opportunity for me to listen to my audiobook! Very exciting! I love to read, but I do not read fast. So I have found over the past few years a passion for audiobooks, and I would listen to them on my commute to work. After My recent move though, my commute went from 30 minutes down to 4 minutes haha. So bye-bye audio listening time.
Realizing my thought process reminded me of the kind of person that I always strive to be: A positive-minded person. Now by NO means do I flit around saying the world is a wonderful place and we're all butterflies free to fly through the wind with not a care in the world-BUT, I do always find some kind of good in the bad. I turned what could have been a frustrating, scary, and inconvenient trip into an adventure that gave me a chance to do something I love (listen to Harry Potter haha). And no matter if an experience is a 1 or a 10 on the scale of badness, you can ALWAYS find a small piece of good if you look hard enough.
Just something to keep in mind. And I promise you, this is something that CAN be aquired, no matter who you are. I have not always been a positive person-for me it's been a "fake-it-till-you-make-it" situation. I forced myself to look at the positive aspect of things, even when I didn't want to, and now it comes as an automatic thought process.
Give it a try sometime, I promise you won't regret it :)