Deal with it!

Last Thursday, I was having a fantastic day; projects at work were coming along on time and as planned, I had a fantastic workout at the gym (that is until I sat down in the car…more to come on that), and I was super excited for the weekend – Mother’s Day weekend!! Since my daughter was born, 2 years ago, my husband and I have made it a tradition to run the Sporting Life Yonge Street 10k, the first year we ran it I had just given birth 3 months before and I was panicked that I would not make it past the first 5k, but knowing that my little girl would be at the finish line kept me going the full race. The second year, having been back to working out for months, Luch and I decided to go balls out and get a really good race time, which we did. This year, having really upped our workout regime we had high expectations of really blowing our time out of the water. But what I was looking forward to the most was seeing my little girl at the finish line and then enjoying a wonderful Mother’s day brunch with my wonderful husband and beautiful daughter. The weekend was going to kick off with a nice girl’s dinner: I was going to take my mom out for dinner with Liana. Saturday I would teach to my favorite group of ladies at the gym then enjoy a lovely day with the family at the park. Sunday would be the race and brunch with my loved ones. A really nice weekend was planned– it's no wonder I was flying on cloud 9 on Thursday.

So what when wrong? Well, let's take it back to the fantastic Thursday workout at the gym. The WOD (workout of the day) was 50-40-30-20-10 reps of push-ups and sit-ups, so in total 150 push-ups and 150 sit-ups in a 15 minute time cap. Silly me did a rookie mistake and did not use a mat for sit-ups and so without getting into too much detail – let's just say that I literally “worked my but off”; so much so that taking a shower was torture (the water hitting the raw skin), sitting was very uncomfortable, wearing jeans was out of the question for the weekend. Friday, I was feeling fine most of the day and had adjusted to my healing backside; it was not until I sat down for dinner with my mom and daughter that I started to notice that my throat was hurting me. On the drive home, I started to get the chills, when I got home I popped a couple of Tylenol’s went to bed and hoped for the best. Saturday morning I woke up and I could not swallow! I felt like a golf ball had gotten lodged in my throat overnight. When I asked Luch to look into my mouth he said “Holy S**t”, you need to go see a Dr….. I knew it – it felt and looked like Strep. And that’s when my lovely weekend that I had so much been looking forward to went right out the window. I spent the morning in a walk in clinic; I spent the rest of the weekend predominantly in bed with a fever and popping antibiotics and Tylenol.

I have to admit, there was a short span of time where I felt sorry for myself, I was mad at the fact that I was not going to be running the race, I was mad that I would be spending this beautiful weekend indoors and in bed; but that time lasted for only a few moments. I knew that being miserable of the fact that I had gotten sick was not going to help the situation at all, nor would it make my home environment a pleasant one to be in; so instead I decide to see the glass half full and enjoy my time inside. I enjoyed the time I had to lie on the couch and listen to the giggles of my daughter playing with my husband, I enjoyed hearing Liana run around all weekend saying “happy mother’s day mama”, I enjoyed the fact that despite my plans being thrown out the window – I still had my loved ones around me which is all I really needed to have a fantastic weekend.

So what do you do when your plans go out the window? When things don’t go the way you expected? Do you see the situation as glass half empty or glass half full? It's not easy having the latter perspective and it sure does take some practice, but take it from me, the rewards are so great. You end up taking what you know would have been a crummy situation and making the best of it, you come out of it with a sense of happiness rather than resentment which can be so toxic to you and everyone around you. We may not have any control of what happens in our lives and to our plans, but what we do have control of how we react to our situations – so the choice is always yours, glass half empty or glass half full.

Despite my healing bum skin, my inflamed throat, my roller-coaster fever, not running my race, one of the most sweetest, unforgettable things happened this weekend, my daughter came home from the grocery store with my husband and came running to me holding a bouquet of flowers and said “Mommy, I bought you medicine”. I know for certain that my attitude rubs off on my daughter and for that I will always be reminded to see my glass half full.

The next time things go not as planned, follow 3 steps, 1) acknowledge the situation, ignoring it will not make it go away 2) control what you can control – spend your energy where it matters 3) be cognizant of your options and choose the one that you can come out of the situation feeling good about – no regrets. AND since we know that life does not always go as planned, plans get broken, schedules will have conflicts, vacations will get cancelled; start to think now about what will remind you when that moment arises that your glass is half full.

On a lighter note - here are 3 things I learned this past week:

1) the saying "work your butt off" should not be taken literally.

2) wash your hands excessively - having strep throat sucks!

3) the glass is only ever half full when your drinking wine.

Have a wonderful week,

Lina