Unexpected Gifts

I was having a conversation with a friend earlier today, she was a bit distressed over something that had happened. On Wednesday her partner and her made a decision to put their house on the market as it was something that they'd been discussing for awhile and finally took the plunge and put it out there to the world. They're not in too much of a hurry to sell it, but figure it will sell when the time is right.

She came home from work yesterday to be told by her partner that an investor was coming to look at the house on Monday. She figures, cool, no worries, plenty of time tomorrow to do some cleaning and get the house looking immaculate. So this morning when her partner called her from work at 9.45am to tell her that the agent was coming over with the investor buyer at 11.30am, her initial reaction to him was "Hell no. No way. No. Not today". And hung up on him. She then took a deep breath and called him back to tell him to get someone to come and get their child so she could clean the house.

As we talked more about this, my friend revealed that her first reaction of hanging up came from a place of insecurity, of feeling judged, of things not being perfect. She said this feeling came with a lot of anxiety for her as she was so used to being prepared for things and didn't like having things sprung on her without notice. She didn't like to look as though she didn't have things under control.

Once she took a deep breath and a giant step back from the situation, she realised that the investor wasn't "judging"her, but merely coming to look at a house that they may or may not wish to purchase. The fact that this house was currently her home and a place she had a lot of pride in, was where ego came in and momentarily took over. She realised that the house didn't need to be immaculate and that she didn't need to scrub showers and toilets, clean windows, dust ceiling fans and clean scuff marks from walls. The investor was simply looking at a house.

When she took an even bigger step away from the situation, she began to be grateful that the investor was in fact coming today, as they'd actually saved her a whole day of "Cinderella-ing". She could now just do a couple of things that needed doing so the house was presentable. But she'd actually been given a gift of having time to spend with her daughter without constraints, deadlines and expectation.

How often do we go through our day to day lives reacting instanteously to situations before thinking them through, not taking the time to let things sink in before we react or to even see the gift that may be hidden? We operate from a place of knee-jerk reactions, with our actions, thoughts and words. Often times these can be to our our detriment. What if for a week, you were to take a deep breath, let things sink in and then respond?