Gorgeous and I were in the car for a while this weekend on my favorite section of tourist pilgrimage corridor. On the way down to Jacksonville on Saturday I made a mental note that the sheer masses of humanity abandoning the Sunshine State northward were having a parking lot effect in the construction zones of I-95. Since we had nothing pressing this afternoon, on our way back we decided to dodge the migrating hoards by taking the scenic route up US-17.
We had no idea this weekend was the Blessing of the Fleet in Darien. Trust me. It’s big times in a small town. (woo. hoo.)
We ended up arriving on the outskirts of town this afternoon, and came to a complete stop for a half hour, just as the priest was blessing the shrimp boats. The best laid plans…
But the whole trip gave Gorgeous and I time to talk.
She shared with me about some business training she had recently. The trainer was talking about falling in love with reality. Basically the trainer was saying that what maters is not what you think about what is happening. Nor is it necessarily important what others say or think about what is going on. The critical thing actually is what is really taking place, what she called reality. We would do better to “fall in love†with reality.
Some times we get fixated on our feelings which can lead to all kinds of twisted thought patterns, often producing less than desirable results. If we focus on reality rather than feelings, we will have a clearer thought pattern leading to more desirable results.
It makes sense.
In Gorgeous’ business this principle is fairly easy to apply. She may feel like things are going well, or poorly. She may have people on her team that say all kinds of weird and wacky things. But the reality of her business is actually measured by her stats: her sales volume, her numbers of presentations, leads, contacts, the size of her check, etc.
As we talked about it, we decided to modify our terminology to “Objective Reality.†Sure there are intangibles out there. And they are real too. But I think it would be helpful if I spent more time focusing on my Objective Reality.
In a moment of traffic induced giddiness we shortened it to O-R. (It wasn’t pretty there for a while.)
I may feel out of shape or a little overweight. But the O-R is that I am a little soft around the middle. I get winded more easily than I’d like. And I lead a fairly sedentary lifestyle (clackity-clack goes the computer keyboard). But until I fall in love with that O-R, my condition is not likely to change.
The other thing to note is that my O-R is really pretty stinking good in some areas of my life. If I don’t fall in love with it in those instances, I’ll never be contented.
What is your O-R?
Maybe you should fall in love with it.