Whistle While You Work

Sometimes the smallest things can make all the difference. Like whistling while you work. I’m not much of a whistler. In fact, my father swore I was the only person on the planet who could whistle off-key. This morning, however, I started to sing the song, Whistle While You Work. For those of you too young to remember, it’s from the Walt Disney movie, Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs.

I don’t know why it popped into my head, but I’m glad it did. The more I sang, the better I felt. The better I felt, the easier my work became. The easier my work was, the more I got done and the better I felt. And that, my friends, in a nutshell, is how the Law of Attraction works.

In any given moment, we can only attract circumstances that are a match to how we feel. Like attracts like. So when I approach my work in a grumpy mood or feeling like a martyr, it is impossible for me to accomplish results that will make me feel good. I will only attract more of what makes me feel like a martyr.

Haven’t you had one of those days when you gritted your teeth and thought, “If I have to deal with ONE MORE THING I’ll explode!”??

On the flip side, have you ever had a day when it seemed you could do no wrong? You just glided from one task to another, producing incredible results.

This morning I realized (one more time) that those magical kinds of days are available to me whenever I want. In order to produce them, I have to deliberately set the stage. I use the phrase “deliberately set the stage” because, most days, we let the stage set us.

Picture these two scenarios:

SCENARIO I – The Stage Sets Betty

In the shower, Betty starts worrying about all the things she has to do at work that day. In the car, she listens to the radio. In between bad news about the economy and traffic, she hears a song that reminds her of her old boyfriend. She sighs deeply as she turns up the volume and sadly sings along.

Betty walks to her office feeling slightly depressed. She immediately sees that there is a stack of pink phone messages sitting on her chair where she won’t miss them, along with a new stack of files sitting in the middle of her desk. She angrily thinks, “Oh, fine, work even comes in when I’m not here! Where’s the coffee?!?”

She puts her purse in the drawer, slams it shut and painfully pinches her finger. Stifling some expletives, she hurries to the break room, only to find the coffee pot is not only empty, it’s dirty. The rest of her day is more of the same.

SCENARIO II – Betty Sets the Stage

In the shower, Betty decides she’s going to have a great day. She thinks ahead to some of the people she’ll need to interact with to get her work done and is happy to realize she likes all of them. In the car, she pops in a CD of upbeat music and sings along while she’s driving.

Betty walks to her office with a spring in her step. She immediately sees that there is a stack of pink phone messages sitting on her chair, along with a new stack of files sitting in the middle of her desk.  She thumbs through the phone messages and is happy to see that four out of five contain information she requested. The fifth message is from a clerk in a branch office who “has just a quick question.” When she investigates the stack of files, she is delighted to see they are ones she asked for yesterday. She wasn’t expecting them for two more days. She smiles as she realizes this puts her ahead of schedule.

Betty goes into the break room, pours herself a freshly brewed cup of coffee and helps herself to a bagel someone brought in. On the way back to her office, she hums the melody from one of the songs she heard in her car. The rest of her day is more of the same.

If we don’t spend the time each day to set the stage for how it’s going to flow, then the circumstances of our lives can pull us down. In both scenarios, the situations were identical. In Scenario II, because she’s already in a good mood, Betty does not make assumptions about the pink messages and files. She investigates first and finds out that they all represent good news. As a bonus, in the extra few minutes it took her to investigate, someone brought in bagels and made a fresh pot of coffee!

And how is YOUR day going?

 

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