There Is Neither Good Nor Bad But Thinking Makes It So

William Shakespeare wrote that line for the play Hamlet, I think he was on to something.

The way we perceive a situation is what makes it a problem, not the situation itself.

Last night I drove a little too fast through a deep puddle and Ol' Bert coughed and spluttered to a halt in the middle of the flood in six inches of water. I knew what had happened straight away, it meant there was water in the distributor cap. It was dark and pouring down with rain and the only solution was to sort it myself or call the AA.

So I jumped in the back, dug out my wellies from the bottom of the wardrobe, pulled them on, grabbed a torch and some WD40, threw on my coat, opened the back door and went for it. I walked round to the front of the van, popped the bonnet and with the torch between my teeth shining into the engine bay I unclipped the distributor cap, gave it a squirt of WD40, shook out the excess, clipped the distributor cap back on, closed the bonnet, jumped back in the cab turned the ignition and the old boy fired up straight away! Job done and I was on my merry way!

I didn't think much about it, I knew what the problem was, knew I could fix it and just did it. I could imagine that there could be hundreds of things that could go wrong that I wouldn't have been able to fix just like that but nothing is a problem unless you think it is.

I've been accused from time to time of being too laid-back for my own good but it's not that i'm laid- back, i'm just not the sort of person that gets in a flap. If something happens you deal with it, if you can do it yourself great, if not ask someone who can help. I had a heart attack last year and needed bypass surgery and naturally I certainly couldn't do it myself but there's no need to get stressed about it. Once i'd accepted it needed doing I just let the doctors get on with it, job done! (I'll write more about that experience in another blog.)

I read an equation that Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup For The Soul said in one of his books that goes E+R=O which means Event Plus Response Equals Outcome. How you respond to something will dictate the outcome. I can't say I've learnt from that lesson since I read it, I still make silly mistakes but it still holds true, even if you respond to an event the wrong way that will still dictate the outcome. E+R=O, brilliant!