Search This Blog

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Ninja Fast

Ninja Fast attitude!

That was what my day revolved around. Ninjas are fast and should never be caught. But what happens when they do? They get sent to traffic school! Well...it's a shameful thing apparently. To be caught breaking 'the law'....not shameful to break it. Just shameful to get caught.

Back story? ok. It's goes waaay back to 15 years old. My Dad is a very amazing man who had all the answers to the world and was very adamant about being correct all the time. A man that lives by 'my way or the high way'...especially ON the highway! He took me out of my first driving lesson. In that little red pontiac, I was 15 and I was more nervous than excited....he said "with great power comes great responsibility"....or was that in a movie? hmm....well regardless, through his actions, words and most of all his intimidating amount of knowledge he taught me how to drive. Until I ran into something....like literally..ran into something...then he gave up on me and signed me up for the mandatory drivers ed class. Yep, we were not going to be able to work together to teach me how to drive. After 6 looong months I finally got my license, got in my little red car and drove around for the next two years. Ninja Fast-forward approximately 15 years (daaang!) and I had lived without my own car for 10 yrs. Believing I was being eco-friendly by taking the bus and bumming rides from my less than eco-friendly car owning friends...I never needed to have my own car.

And then I did.

Only a Yasmin would buy a car on Monday and get pulled over for SPEEDING on Friday. Laugh if you will...but I got caught going 13 miles over the speed limit. oops! 13? Really? Well the officer was nice enough to write it for only 5 miles over...because I apparently didn't actually know the speed limit of the area. When I squealed "..but....I don't WANT a ticket. I have NEVER had a ticket! What do you DO with one?!?!!" he consoled me by telling me that it was ok and I could maybe get it deferred...he in fact...has 3 speeding tickets on his record! Didn't help. I was still bitter and angry at the injustice of the world. And it got worse, in order for my Dad to never find out about this ticket, I would need to defer it, pay a gazillion dollars, take a traffic class AND be an absolutely perfect driver for the next year.

So what does this have to do with a Yasmin? Well above all things I am my father's daughter and to have an unclean driving record could land you in one of those disowned daughter categories (he actually is a lovely man, but kinda tough when it comes to some things). I will do anything-except go the speed limit- to make sure my dad never finds out about this ticket. So I sucked it up...signed up and showed up for what one of my running buddies called "traffic training school" when in actuality it is a very serious "defensive driving" course. I even got an official certificate of completion. Anyway, the class was good, it's hard to describe all that I learned...it was after all FOUR hours long! So, ninja fast, to the point we go....

Your attitude. How you wake up every day and determine to live your life is exactly how you will live it. Being careless about your life, be complacent in your effort, and being disengaged in personal growth can land you in an 'accident'. In your life it can long term, maybe having the years go by without going after your dreams because you don't believe they will actually come true, or as immediate as not planning in advance for something important you needed to do tomorrow.

In traffic school I learned that there is a direct correlation between how much you press the gas and your negative (frustrated, angry, cocky, self-centered, depressed, sad, bitchy) attitude. A lot of people out there on the road make poor decisions based on their perceptions of how others are treating them. So...if there is a person driving slow or even the speed limit we turn that into a feeling of how much that ONE person is out to screw with us...and rationalize that everything they are doing is in fact simply to piss us off, or make us late, or slow us down. So why do we rationalize to the negative side? How difficult would it be for us to think about how hard the other person driving around has it. Maybe they have had a family emergency, maybe their little heart is broken, maybe they just lost their job or are just particularly stressed. Maybe their whole purpose for existing does NOT to revolve around you? Maybe.

Thanks to traffic school I am going to think about how my attitude affects me every day. I think as a Yasmin, I owe it to everyone else on the road, whether I'm in my car or my running shoes, to have a positive attitude. How's your attitude today? And how much power to make it positive will you exercise today? I know my running ninjas will keep a positive attitude as we do sprints on a hill. Maybe we will try an experiment....half will think that the hills suck....and the other will think that they are great....and then we'll see who has a better time on the road today!

Well basically the message of the day is to ch-ch-check yourself before you wreck yourself! How is a Yasmin going to turn this into a beneficial lesson for being a running ninja? Check your attitude. If you think you can do something, you can. If you want to suffer through it, you will. You may need to acknowledge that half the battle is showing up, and that having a positive attitude makes the rest of the battle seem less like a fight....and more of an opportunity.

No comments:

Post a Comment