Resilience and Life Mottos
I had to isolate last week as, you’ve guessed it, COVID-19 finally got me with mild symptoms. I fell ill and tested positive on a bad day – the 3rd anniversary of my husband’s sudden passing and an email I just did not need … the caterer of a conference for English trainers which I had been planning for weeks cancelled just three days before the event. HELP!!! So I had to climb into my RESILIENCE box and ring all the restaurants in Oberursel only to be told it was too late to order food and get people … Three things all at once but if you know me, you know I don’t give up and at least I was distracted from my sadness and worsening cold.
A bit of outside the box thinking and a recommendation made me call an Italian take-away and I gave the lady a big virtual hug when she said it was no problem to deliver pizzas, lasagne and tiramisu to the location – so easy and a lot cheaper!
My next challenge was to open the conference virtually on Zoom to a black screen … just after practicing the same situation with a dear student of mine who had had to open an award ceremony virtually as she had also had COVID (notice use of past perfect). So it was really a case of “Practise what you preach” and in this case, practise, practise, practise! The advantage was, of course, that I could hold my script below the screen so it didn’t look as if I was reading it!
It is in these situations that my three life mottos come to play:
- Don’t sweat the small stuff (and most stuff is small)
- Always look on the bright side of life (and you need good people around you for that)
- Count your blessings (even if they seem to be hiding)
And one thing my husband used to say in German “wir kriegen es gebacken” – I always found it so reassuring!
Do you have life mottos which help you in difficult situations? You might like some in the following link:
144 Best Life Mottos of All Time (& Stories Behind Them) – Hasty Reader
I particularly like No. 11 – “Good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement”. If I make a mistake, waste time or money on something, it all goes into my “Better next time” box as “there is no point crying over spilt milk”.