Change Your Mood With Your Own Thoughts

Think On the Good

I had just gotten a hot new haircut and was happy and feeling rather good, when something happened and that feeling was almost forgotten.

On the way home from the haircut, I stopped to pick up supplies from the hardware store. The deed was done and I was loading the heavy items into the back of my car when a woman pulled up into the space next to me. There were many other spaces, but something in my energy pulled her right there.

After parking as close to my car as she possibly could, she got out of her's, walked around to where I was and looked me up and down as if daring me to speak. I did, I said hello.

She muttered something and marched into the store.

I finished my work out with the heavy items, checked my hair in the rear window and smiled at my new self, but when I walked around to the driver’s side door to get in, I realized that I couldn’t because the woman had parked too closely.

I tried to get in from the passenger’s side and considered climbing through the window, like Jenny McCarthy in the movie Heat, but thought better of it, so I went back into the big store to try to find the woman.

I needed to be home to get ready to go out to dinner with friends, so I quickly asked the customer service folks to page close parking woman.

The announcement was made three times and I met several nice people who also drove her make and model, before the woman finally appeared. She was angry and yelling about how that black woman had better not hit her car when someone pointed out that I was standing right there. (I’m always amazed how race and differences come up and out when we are I the wrong.)

I didn’t give her a chance to speak; I calmly said, “Your car is fine, but I can’t get out of my space.”

She barked that she didn’t know how that could be and marched back to the car.

She got in and hurriedly pulled her car back while I got into mine. She waited for me to do so and when I did, she pulled right back into the spot the same way; only now she took up two spaces.

She never said thank you, or I’m sorry and clearly acted as if I had done something to her.

As I drove off, I wanted to turn around and tell her a thing or six and then I thought of my six thing rule.

 It takes six positive events to undo the feeling of the negative one, but why wait, so whenever something negative occurs, I think of six positive events that have also happened.

I thought of my new haircut and my barber Vernon who made me laugh when I told him that he could change it if I didn’t like it. He told me that I would be wearing it if I liked it or not.

I thought of my friends that I’d be seeing later and how they always brought me joy. I thought of how my daughter had made me watermelon juice that morning and all of the beautiful folks at the farmers market. I thought of the joy in my manager, Jeanine’s voice that morning when she called to share ideas and possibilities and I thought of the look on my electrician’s face when he talked about his grandchildren.

I was smiling like a loon when I looked in the mirror and saw my new self and new haircut and suddenly, the woman and the time sucking event was a distant memory.

We all possess the power  to change our thoughts and our mood, even when crap happens.

Smile, think of six good things and smile some more.

Be you, be well, be the smiling six.

Bertice Berry, PhD.