"No One" Perspective...



A beautiful Saturday... Arts festival raging downtown... There is a million other things that I would rather be doing today other than being here at the studio waiting for students to show up for class, but I know that once I get moving and people start to show up everything will be good! BUT... The catch is...NO ONE SHOWS UP! Not only does no one show up for group class, but no one shows up to the intro class either. WTF?! So I call a couple of people who scheduled their intro class with me Wednesday night. I hear the reasons (or excuses): "I would love to be there, but (insert "reason" here)... I reeeeeally wanted to be there, but I had things to do... people to see... Homework... Dog ate my car keys... Had to wash my hair... Oops, forgot... ...I'm broke (yet spent $50 on my bar tab last night), yadda, yadda, yadda..."

Needless to say I am a bit peeved by this time for blowing my entire morning and some of the afternoon on what feels like absolutely nothing! Sure Saturday class hasn't been really consistent due to my seminar & training schedule, but since I can rarely find anyone to cover class we end up having to cancel. Now one might think that those days off might give people a bit of a break to enjoy some of time off and/or get some things done; they might look forward to training on the dates available. However it doesn't work like that. Rather it gives people the opportunity to get out of the habit of coming to class.

I know you are probably wondering if I am done complaining, whining and being bitter about about all of this yet!? So let me get to my point. I want to thank everyone for helping ME train without even showing up. After my last phone call to my no-show I began changing my perspective because it was either that or I was about to go ballistic. So I took a breath and a proverbial step back from the situation to re-assess my state of mind. Here's what I came up with:

1. My attitude is about ME not others.

2. I can't control what others do, only how I respond to it.

3. After my group class was a no show I should've called my intro class students to confirm that they were still showing up.

4. If I wasn't teaching I would've probably slept in anyway. So how much time was really "wasted?!"

5. It's my decision to teach, run a school, travel for seminars, etc. AND I LOVE IT! So sometimes you have to be willing to shake off some of the disappointments & (try) not to whine, complain and carry on (or if you do I hope you have a blog, ha ha).

6. Just because I am so into training and I choose to sacrifice other activities and resources to do so, doesn't mean that every else shares my same perspective to the same degree.

7. Do to the lack of classes I was able to catch up with some of the people at the fitness center and have a great conversation with Dan about this very subject!

8. If this is the worse thing that happens to me today I'm doing pretty darn good!

9. Practice this lesson of letting go.

...and yes for those of you reading I AM only human, emotions and all. (For those readers who are instructors; I KNOW you've had days when you felt the same way! :-)

Keep going.

All the best,
~Craig

Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 5, 2010 at 2:29 PM

    sounds like Moshes blogs when he travels around the world and no one shows, doesn't get picked up, doesn't get paid, etc.

    So what did you work on in your free time?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Craig GrayJune 6, 2010 at 8:37 AM

    As for "what did I do w/my free time," refer to #7 and the writing of this entire blog! :-)

    -Craig

    ReplyDelete

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