A matter of perspective

There are lots of difficult situations in life. However, it is up to you to decide how difficult they are going to be.

As of last Thursday I have a newborn living in my house. While this is awesome, it will probably be several months until I can sleep all the way through the night again and I’m often awake at 2:00 AM rocking a baby to (hopefully) sleep. There are more or less two ways that I can deal with this:

  • Stupid kid, why won’t he just go to sleep??!?!??
  • God has blessed me with this cute little addition to our family and I get the honor and privilege of teaching him how to sleep, eat, play, and live.

Regardless of which of those two viewpoints I take, the reality doesn’t change: he’s going to keep me up at night. There’s really nothing I can do to change that, that’s just how newborns are. But I can change the way I look at it and the attitude that I take towards the situation. As a result, I’m now smiling at 2:00 AM as I look at our little youngster instead of being bitter about having to roll out of bed yet again in the middle of the night.

The same idea can apply to any difficult situation in life, including your career. Maybe you’re stuck doing boring maintenance work, working with less than stimulating technologies, or just not doing what you’d really like to do. While this can certainly be draining, try and take a new approach to it: in the morning when you get to work, choose to strive to be the best that you can be with whatever technology you’re using. Try and find new ways to get better and faster at it. Turn those hindrances and constraints into a challenge. Don’t let the situation determine your happiness or your motivation.

Every day you have a choice to be awesome at what you do or to find ways to be negative and let things tear you down. It’s much more fun to be awesome!