"No One" Perspective...



A beautiful Saturday... Arts festival raging downtown... There is a million other things that I would rather be doing today other than being here at the studio waiting for students to show up for class, but I know that once I get moving and people start to show up everything will be good! BUT... The catch is...NO ONE SHOWS UP! Not only does no one show up for group class, but no one shows up to the intro class either. WTF?! So I call a couple of people who scheduled their intro class with me Wednesday night. I hear the reasons (or excuses): "I would love to be there, but (insert "reason" here)... I reeeeeally wanted to be there, but I had things to do... people to see... Homework... Dog ate my car keys... Had to wash my hair... Oops, forgot... ...I'm broke (yet spent $50 on my bar tab last night), yadda, yadda, yadda..."

Needless to say I am a bit peeved by this time for blowing my entire morning and some of the afternoon on what feels like absolutely nothing! Sure Saturday class hasn't been really consistent due to my seminar & training schedule, but since I can rarely find anyone to cover class we end up having to cancel. Now one might think that those days off might give people a bit of a break to enjoy some of time off and/or get some things done; they might look forward to training on the dates available. However it doesn't work like that. Rather it gives people the opportunity to get out of the habit of coming to class.

I know you are probably wondering if I am done complaining, whining and being bitter about about all of this yet!? So let me get to my point. I want to thank everyone for helping ME train without even showing up. After my last phone call to my no-show I began changing my perspective because it was either that or I was about to go ballistic. So I took a breath and a proverbial step back from the situation to re-assess my state of mind. Here's what I came up with:

1. My attitude is about ME not others.

2. I can't control what others do, only how I respond to it.

3. After my group class was a no show I should've called my intro class students to confirm that they were still showing up.

4. If I wasn't teaching I would've probably slept in anyway. So how much time was really "wasted?!"

5. It's my decision to teach, run a school, travel for seminars, etc. AND I LOVE IT! So sometimes you have to be willing to shake off some of the disappointments & (try) not to whine, complain and carry on (or if you do I hope you have a blog, ha ha).

6. Just because I am so into training and I choose to sacrifice other activities and resources to do so, doesn't mean that every else shares my same perspective to the same degree.

7. Do to the lack of classes I was able to catch up with some of the people at the fitness center and have a great conversation with Dan about this very subject!

8. If this is the worse thing that happens to me today I'm doing pretty darn good!

9. Practice this lesson of letting go.

...and yes for those of you reading I AM only human, emotions and all. (For those readers who are instructors; I KNOW you've had days when you felt the same way! :-)

Keep going.

All the best,
~Craig

Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 5, 2010 at 2:29 PM

    sounds like Moshes blogs when he travels around the world and no one shows, doesn't get picked up, doesn't get paid, etc.

    So what did you work on in your free time?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Craig GrayJune 6, 2010 at 8:37 AM

    As for "what did I do w/my free time," refer to #7 and the writing of this entire blog! :-)

    -Craig

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Uncomfortable Situation

Image
  Funny pic (and movie) about a not so funny situation… In training as in Life, it’s better to treat people with dignity and respect. However… What does that look like in the moment? Being that I’m teaching a Women’s Assault Prevention and Response Workshop this weekend - it’s probably a good time to talk about… Uncomfortable Situations Let’s talk about training at the academy for a minute… We run open co-ed classes at the local academy. What does that mean? Men and women train together, but we don’t stop there. People of different skill levels, backgrounds, ethnicities, sexual orientations, careers, religious beliefs, political affiliations, ages, injuries, pre-existing conditions, life experience, training expectations etc. etc. train together! We ALL work together! Overall, I think it’s better this way. Of course sometimes there’s static, you know, conflicts, and misunderstanding. When something happens, most of the time it’s just that, a misunderstanding… Sometimes people ...
Read more

What'd You Say?!

Image
  You ever have a conversation with someone who really lifted your spirits? How about having a conversation with someone who’s a real downer?! We spend a lot of time talking to people. Matter of fact, talking is one of the most under rated and under trained aspects of protecting yourself. It’s much better if you can talk your way out of a bad situation, rather than having to resort to some form of physicality. This is why we spend so much time on sharing effective communication frameworks in the PeaceWalker course. But All of that Aside… When we think about communicating, we often just think about talking to other people. We forget how we talk to ourselves! You may have heard it called, “Self talk.” All day long we talk to ourselves. We carry on an inner dialogue in our heads that only we can hear. Unfortunately, this means it's very easy to be hard on ourselves. There's something about privacy which makes it easy to say the things you would never say out loud to another living...
Read more

Cracks in Your Foundation?!

Image
  Last night we had one of our weekly coaching calls for the PeaceWalker Evolution Course. What a great call! Rob and Jenn, a couple of the Level II - Momentum folks (people who graduated from Evolution last year and came back for the second Level.), were tasked to run the meeting as part of their training. I must say, they did a stand up job! The topic of discussion was building an Unshakable Foundation. WTH is that!? It’s basically the way you live. Your habits. What you do in your day to day life. How do you train your… Body  - Your physical health Mind  - What you’re filling your head with Mouth  - How you’re communicating Heart  - How you foster your relationships Why?! Without a solid foundation it’s difficult to remain balanced. When you are not balanced, it more difficult to stay calm, cool, and collected, (especially) under pressure. As I often say,  “You can’t hide crazy.” (It eventually comes out!) Regardless… You don’t have to be in the PeaceWal...
Read more