Ever Have One of THOSE Days?

They pop up when you least expect them. They either send you into an emotional high orbit or send you crashing nose first into the pavement. There are even those occasions, maybe when we're on auto pilot, when they are barely even noticeable and they affect us not one whit.
I'm referring to those first thing in the morning, right out of the chute, pieces of unexpected information, or critical updates... or sensory inputs. The effect they have on us is tied closely to what your current state of mind is. If you are riding high, feeling good about yourself, your friends and life in general, you can handle darn near any news without suffering adverse effects. When you are in this state, this zone if you will, a sledgehammer to the cerebellum will slow you down, but only a bit. Life can't wrestle you to the ground, let alone pin you, as long as there's breath in your body. Immovable object... I'd like you to meet irresistible force. There are people out there who are in this state, and seem to be able to remain in this state perpetually. It's probably not a significant portion of the population, but it does register on the Lecter scale (Hannibal).
I throw Lecter's name into the mix just to draw your attention to how we as humans, seem to consume ourselves with things we have no control over. Things in our daily lives sometimes fall into that category - out of our control - but are not the norm. We control a lot of our daily lives, we make conscious decisions to choose a course of action. These actions all come with their own set of likely outcomes, which our brains process and then tell us in advance which course to choose. Plastic or paper, stay or go, regular or unleaded, polite or annoying, left or right, red or black, formal or casual, early or late, walk or ride, cry or laugh, matte or glossy, regular or super-size, soup or salad, text or voice, today or tomorrow, love or hate, fresh or frozen, coffee or tea, street or freeway, happy or sad, selfish or helpful, crabby or friendly... I think you get the picture. Literally hundreds of decisions that we make every day are processed, for the most part, automatically.

The choices I listed above (and hundreds more) are always right in front of us, and if we're not happy about the direction we're headed, we have the steering wheel in our hand. Take yourself out of "automatic" for a day and alter your course just a bit, choose a bit differently, and be amazed at the results within a day or two. De-rutify in street slang.

I've heard it said that our lives are what they are because of: the people we meet, the books we read and the places we go. A bit of an oversimplification, but I think pretty accurate. Chew on that for a few minutes... a quick review of some of those connections is worth a minute or two of your time. We know it, we just don't think about it.

This brings us to the Question of the day; How do you handle those first thing in the morning... day starters? How's your life experience factor treating or guiding you? Is it guiding you, or are you in control of it? You can't change the past, but you can change how you deal with it. You can box it up and put it on a shelf and ignore it, or you can trot it out, pin it up on the corkboard and re-live it endlessly. If you choose to continually put it up on the corkboard, at least bring in an interior mental decorator to help you decide what to keep and what to just throw away. We all have more control than we realize and in my experience, cruise control is best left in the car.

So what's it gonna' be? Bath or shower, coffee or juice, white or wheat, news or music, blog or read, friend or enemy, leather or canvas, silk or satin, run or walk, frown or smile, cat or dog, think or act, change or...