Jiggle Wiggle Flexible Jell-O™
I believe that you control your destiny, that you can be what you want to be.
You can also stop and say, ‘No, I won’t do it, I won’t behave this way anymore. Leo Buscaglia US author, educator
In Washington, D.C., there’s an AA meeting I really enjoy. The crowd is always raucous – they cheer and stomp their feet and visit back and forth as speakers tell their stories. Although I usually go there when one of “my boys” is celebrating, it’s the first timer who brings tears to my eyes.
My favorite is a young man in his twenties who seemed to have a hard time standing up. He was pale and stressed out and a little sweaty. He said, mumbling: “Yesterday I was drunk. But I started thinking about how things would be if I got sober. So this morning, I tossed out a vodka bottle and the three beers I had left. I’ve been sober now for about nine hours. I hope I can keep it up. I tried a couple of times before and it didn’t take. But this time I made myself come here.”
The leader hugged him and pressed a one day chip into his hand. The shouting and cheering became too loud for me to hear what folks were saying to him but I could see the way he was being hugged and encouraged. What made him decide to get to the AA meeting – finally? Well, it’s like this. If you’ve ever seen the commercial where the people jiggle like Jell-O™ and twist themselves into shapes of letters, you see it in action. He was flexible. He had the choice of being a drunk or being someone with a real life. He voted with his feet: he came to the meeting.
A gazillion years ago, in Roman times, a slave named Epectitus decided that we order our lives by our attitudes about what’s happening to us. He said that concentrating on being flexible mentally helps us CHOOSE how we look at whatever is happening to us.
Are you flexible in how you think or act about what’s happening in your world? Can you find the flexibility in you to choose the reaction that is in your best interest?
Meditation for the Day
“The creative thinker is flexible and adaptable and prepared to rearrange his thinking.” A. J. Cropley
Action for the Day
From now on, I’ll ask myself: Am I flexible in how I react to people, places, situations, new ideas? How would my life change if I decided to work on my flexibility?
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