It's Time to Blow Snow!

My daughter was so angry!

She woke up one morning after one of the biggest snow storms in southern Alberta history and realized that there was absolutely no chance that she would be able to move her car out of the driveway. The storm had blown huge banks of snow all around it and the forecast promised more of the same. Her husband, who is an early riser and parks his vehicle on the street, had been able to pull away from the curb and was long gone to his job in the city.

Kristal decided that the best thing to do was to call it a "paper day". She would stay home and focus on her emails, desk projects and the things she could resolve through telephone conversations. She would just have her teenaged sons get the snow blower out and clear the driveway when they returned from their school and work activities so she would be ready for her regular routine the following morning.

Well, she called her husband to share this plan and was shocked to hear him say that he hadn't bothered to have the snow blower repaired when it had quit working the previous winter. She asked "Why on earth didn't you fix it?" to which he replied "I didn't know we would be getting so much snow this year!"

Now Kristal is an extremely organized and efficient individual to tends to handle situations as they occur, so this raised her frustration level even higher. She and her husband have a bachelor friend who is a mechanic and she just knew that he would be more than willing to trade a little of his time and skills to repair the snow blower in exchange for a couple of her excellent home-cooked meals. But that wasn't going to happen in the near future because he had work commitments too.

At the end of the day, the husband arrived home with a brand new snow blower! This wasn't necessarily the way Kristal would have handled the situation but she bit her tongue knowing that at least she was going to be able to get to work the next morning. When she didn't hear the snow blowing running and looked out the window without seeing any action, however, she began looking for her husband.

He was in the laundry room - a place that he seldom frequents as she does all the laundry for the household. She approached him with the question "What are you doing?" and he replied "I'm doing laundry".

She lost it! "Get out of the laundry room and start blowing snow!".

So many times we get ourselves in a similar situation. We avoid doing the very things that we should be doing and then find ourselves in trouble.

Every week I hear clients talk about how frustrated they are. Some come to tell me that they were reprimanded at work for not doing something on their job description. They explain that they had gone "above and beyond" doing something else instead and are confused about why they weren't appreciated because of this. They find it hard to understand why their complaints about co-workers fall on the deaf ears of management.

Sometimes parents report their confusion about teens who are angry because the parent missed a promised outing even though the parent tried to make it up to them by offering another promise.

Lovers talk about how hurt they feel when it appears that their partner puts work or their hobbies ahead of the relationship.

Customers don't like it when they watch an employee ignore them while they are engaged in what is obviously a personal telephone call that could be continued at a later time.

We don't like it when our lives are negatively impacted by people who are in the laundry room when we think they should be blowing snow!

But how many times do we do the same thing to others?

This week, think about the snow blowing jobs that you have been neglecting. It's time to get out of the laundry room and just get them done!

You'll likely be surprised to find out that they didn't take as long as you thought they would. And, when they are completed everyone, including you, will be so happy!

It's time to blow some snow!

And now I would like to invite you to claim your Free Instant Access to a complimentary list of 10 Steps to Making Your Life an Adventure when you visit http://lindahancock.com

From Dr. Linda Hancock, Registered Psychologist and Registered Social Worker