Depends on how you're lookin' at stuff...

LIGHTS AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

Further to the "attitude" thing I keep goin' on about, there is ALWAYS a light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how dark or scary and it's (almost) NEVER an oncoming train. 

And even if it is an oncoming train - get off the track, egg. Whatta-you-stoopid? Tracks are crazy places to stand.

But hey, metaphorically, any train (aka problem) can be handled one way or another. It's all in the way you deal with it.

Lets take someone for example - Me.

Yup - 6 ft 2 inches of "me-ness". 
And no, you can't take the "me" out of that statement and put in a "p" instead. Stop being difficult...sheesh.

Now like I've alluded to in previous posts, I'm the kinda guy who does my best when I'm in the corner with no way out. Put me up against the ropes and yup, I'll fight back every single time. It's in my nature. It's the same with ultimatums - not keen on those either because I'm being told "or else". Me, I'll always choose "or else". I know this about myself. I think its some kind of mischief gene I've was born with.

But what about you?  
When do you get that feeling and your determination kicks in?  In any crisis, when are you at your best? What are your strengths?

Is it when you're told "Nah, you can't do that, you're not tough/smart/skilled etc enough, it will win and you will lose" - does that get you standing up and proving them wrong?

Or maybe you're that girl or guy who as soon as a problem fronts up, you analyse the shit out of it and solve it before it even gets a chance to overwhelm you?

Regardless of when you're at your best, step one should be figuring this out. By defining your rock'n'roll skills, you get the option to - when a problem rises - hit it hard and fast since you already know the best way of approaching it first.  

Lead with your strengths so to speak...I know a few of mine :) 

Once you have this sorted, changing your attitude toward any oncoming train/ problem - is your greatest asset, it's like another super-power.

Every problem that comes your way is just another challenge and another opportunity to  work your new attitude mojo, stressing out over it for hours on end is just another big waste of time..

Now life as it can be, you might find yourself in multiple tunnels with multiple lights from time to time.

But for every time this happens - work on improving your attitude toward it and trust that there is no train, just a chance or an opportunity to rock on with your bad self.

Awareness/Attitude (1) + Trust yourself/no train (2) = Handle the Jandal  

It all really comes down to simple logic in the end.

Whatever it is that is annoying you, has upset you, has thrown you into crisis mode, you can 100% trust that it can't possibly stay that way because sooner or later, history and logic states it absolutely has to change.

And here's that pearl of wisdom again.

The old generic Chinese proverb that states, "Change is change only". 

And if you don't like that, try this - "Everything has to change, it's neither positive nor negative but it is unavoidable no matter what it is, so best handle the jandal best you can and try steering the change in the best direction." 

You choose how you react to everything and look for positives when it does. 

Sounds hard, right? 

Naaaaaaaaaaaaah, not even oww. 

Like everything, practice makes perfect and start on the little things, don't go tackling the big issues straight away. Be kinda like trying to stop a train with a fly swat. Not gonna work...well, unless you're using it on the train driver.  You get my point.  Start small.

To illustrate this a little clearer.

Case in point (and if any of my team are reading this, odds are you've heard this doozy already.)

Let's call this "The Shampoo Bottle Incident".

To set the scene. It's reasonably early in the morning, everyone in my house is sound asleep. It's peaceful, quiet. There might or might not be a young deer and its mother prancing along outside my bedroom window to some Disney children's movie soundtrack. 

I get up out of bed as I need to start work early, got a big day ahead. 
Head into the bathroom, reach in and turn on the shower. So far so good. Got my suit ready, some socks, boxer shorts, belt, pair of shoes etc - all ready.

I am literally tip-toeing around the house, being considerate to my family and letting them sleep, tucked up nice and warm. A field mouse would've been envious of just how amazingly quiet I was being, stealth training coming in handy. You could've heard that field mouse fart at a hundred metres if he/she was a bit gassy. 

But you know mornings, I was still feeling a bit face-smashed and waking up, I grabbed a towel, flicked the extractor fan on (it's reasonably quiet too) and I stripped. 

We have our shower over our bath, just to set more of the scene for you. On this morning, I even risked the smile of the somewhat satisfied since the water was running nice and warm. Warm shower, clothes ready. Great day.

However, as I climbed into the shower, my toe just so happened to catch a half-empty shampoo bottle and sent it flicking up into the air. 
Down it fell toward the empty bath.

The first hit, my whole world changed. 

Have you ever heard just how loud a half empty plastic bottle can be as it hits a bath, bounces, hits again and then at least 4 more times?

Yes, it was Loud. REAL LOUD. Wake the dead, dudes been in a coma for a billion years and has just been woken up by this noise loud.

My first reaction? 

You guessed it - I had the "soundless scream of the utterly and truly tormented", backed up with a little bit of "how the @#!%$# could this happen?? Damn you !#@%@!% shampoo bottle!!"

I had tried so hard to be quiet, and was now worried I had woken Andrea, Trey and Finn, my love for them had me being so quiet in the first place. 

Luckily however, none of them woke up.  A few seconds passed and I had calmed down. Whew. Crisis averted. Take a breath. World returned slowly to normal.

But Yeah... Nope.  I should've known.

Immediately after I re-set the shampoo bottle back into its normal spot and started climbing back into the shower again...it seemed the Gods of Shampoo and Conditioner had decided they were most displeased with me.

I'm normally a calm, cruisey and patient kinda guy but this sent me from about 0.1 on the Richter scale to around 10 in less than a nano-second.

I thought I might actually EXPLODE with rage. 

And to make matters worse, the shampoo bottle bounced around even louder than the first time like atomic bombs going off.

I swear I got caught in the concussion blasts. 

All of my pent up anger was leveled directly at this inanimate object with all the fury one man could muster. 

Had I been holding my samurai sword - and no, this is not some awkward reference given I was completely naked at the time - it would have been all over save for the bad pained expression.

This rage in hindsight was so stupid since "I" was 100% the cause of the noise, not the bottle. 

Bottles can't think, or fall over on their own. Nor (far as I know) do they have their own Gods, not even ones angry at me.

But at 6:30am when my normal quiet skills had failed me? 

I was briefly unable to process logic at all. 

Angry monster time. 

I'd fully boarded the Nope-train to Screw-that-ville where I was determined to become Mayor. 

But this now raises my question about oncoming trains, crisis and problems.

If I hadn't adjusted my thinking toward the shampoo bottle and calmed down, if I had carried on being angry and frustrated by something so simple, how do you think the rest of my day would have gone....?

Mmmmmm. Yeah, that's deep, in that shallow, here look at this obvious thing you can't miss kinda way.

But to finish off this post, I do have one more question for you;

Just how many of your own days have been ruined, or have been more stressed out, simply because you got hung up on the fact you were dealing with a train that you think hit you?

That's what I thought.... Wasted days, wasted on a stubborn desire to cling to negativity.

Awareness/Attitude (1) + Trust yourself/no train (2) = Handle the Jandal  

Go on, try the positive approach, give it a shot. 

Never know how your day might change.

Mine did.