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This is Optimal Living Daily episode 2789, how my personal hairdresser drama led me to Enlightenment, by Rose Loundsbury of Roseloundsbury.com, and I'm just a molecular personal narrator. Now let's get right to our next post as we optimize your life. How my personal hairdresser drama led me to Enlightenment, by Rose Loundsbury of Roseloundsbury.com. Disclaimer, this isn't a typical post about minimalism or organization.
I won't explain how to organize your sock drawer or let go of the Lego Star Wars collection you've held onto since middle school. Note, if you are a TIE Fighter loving member of the ladder category, take my one word advice, Craigslist, then watch your date night roster fill up. Trust me on this. This post deals with a different type of excess that we should all ditch from our lives, drama.
You can't say save it for your mama or try to avoid it, but the fact is, drama comes for all of us at some point, somehow, some way. I usually pride myself on avoiding drama, but it still sneaks into my life as it did this past week when I tried to redeem my hairstyling gift certificate not one at a silent auction. I won't go into the tedious details of this particular drama. You don't really need to know everything that went down or the details of a long text messages sent back and forth.
If you really want to know, ask my husband who's forced to listen to me indignantly reread the messages to him while he feigned interest. His body language said, I'm listening and I care deeply about this major upset in your life. While his glazed over eyes said, please finish talking so I can escape to my man cave and watch sports. The gist of it is, I thought someone was trying to scoot me over.
I got righteous. I gathered quote unquote evidence of this over in the form of a four mention text messages and I enlisted the support of friends who would naturally be on my side to reinforce my self identified position of absolute rightness. I was prepared to quite possibly wound someone's career in pursuit of said rightness by calling a supervisor and complaining. I was going to be that girl, the one I try really, really hard most of the time, not to be.
It was all this self righteousness, all this evidence, all this sense of personal entitlement. How did I feel? Down right terrible. I actually spent one yearly sleepless night full of anxiety.
The next day I felt nauseous and could hardly eat. If you know me, you know I'm an eater. I even broke my rule about never passing up free baked goods and declined a perfectly delicious looking chocolate chip cookie. It was horrible.
At the end of that day, I realized I needed to do one thing. Drop it like a hot potato. Wait, no, hold on to that. Those are yummy.
Add some sour cream and chives and you've got yourself a well-rounded meal. Or a penny off the Empire State Building. No, hold on to that too. You could hurt somebody.
Or an angry stray cat. Yes, drop that one, please. I needed to just drop this drama. I deleted the text thread I'd been clinging to for evidence.
I crossed calls a lawn manager off my to-do list. I made peace with having spent a few dollars and receiving nothing in return because actually I did get something. A very important lesson. Somebody smart named Gandhi once said, Be the change you wish to see in the world.
This statement always gets me when I look at my kids. I want them to live in a better world than I do. I want them to change the world in positive, caring ways. I want them to see kindness and heal conflict whenever it is in their power.
And thus, I must do the same. Because really, my drama is essentially no different than anyone else's. All human conflict could be summed up as such. I am right and they are wrong.
How could they do that to me? I don't deserve this. At best, this results in petty text messages sent back and forth between hairstylists and a suburban mom. At worst, it starts worse.
And that might sound extreme, but if you look at the root cause of all human conflict, it stems from the same basic feeling. I've been screwed. So, my drop to my drama. And I felt better.
But then that Gandhi quote started nagging at me and I did just a little bit more. I took steps to heal it. I sent another text message and told her, I was sorry. And that I wanted to try again.
And perhaps, could we still make this work if it was okay with her? And you know what? She said yes. With a smiley face emoji.
So, I don't know why I meant to get my hair done at the end of March. I mean, hopefully that smiley face emoji is enough to ensure that the woman cutting my hair doesn't wish me ill that she too wants to find peace beyond the drama. Because, you know what Gandhi also said, never let an angry person near your head with scissors. You just listened to the post titled, How My Personal Hairdresser Drama Led Me To Enlightenment by Rose Lansbury of Rose Lansbury.com.
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In the years of doing this podcast, you'd think we would have heard this quote from Gandhi hundreds of times, but this is the first time I remember hearing it. It really represents how I generally feel. My rule when it comes to ethics, sort of, is if everyone behaved this way, what would happen? Or in other words, would the world be a better place if everyone did this?
It's not a perfect method for philosophy, but I like it for the most part. I think in the case of Rose's incident involving the salon, yeah, probably the world could be better off by dropping this sort of stuff. But there could be ramifications of businesses starting to take advantage of customers if everyone let everything slide all the time, so there is a line there. Where we draw the line is up to us.
Is it worth the stress and suffering or do we let a particular instance go? There are no rules, but it's something to keep in mind, especially when it's something like the driver in front of us cutting us off. It really does no good to honk and go into a personal rage. We've all been on the other side of that honk, and we either think we didn't do anything wrong and just get mad back, or we knew what we did and already feel bad.
So in either case, the honk and the other person's rage doesn't really help. It just adds to noise pollution and irritation of other drivers. So we have to pick our battles by simply being a little bit more mindful when the drama arises. So do try to be mindful.
I'll do my best. Have a great rest of your day in the middle of the week if you're listening in real time, and I'll catch you tomorrow, where you're optimal life. Awaits.