Smell the Roses and Smell the Text!

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As in real life, sometimes things aren't always what they seem. I recall sending someone an email during my corporate days and ten minutes later my phone rang and all I could hear was SCREAMING! I sprinted over to her desk to resolve the issue by pointing out what the message was really about. 


The recipient of the email had apparently glanced quickly at my words, her eyes went to one grouping in particular, and she missed what I was trying to say entirely! 


Turns out that she was under a lot of pressure and had little time to spend on the mountain of emails that avalanched on her. 


I did receive an apology.


Well, we’re all in a rush nowadays, aren’t we?


And now I’ve wound up at the embarrassing end of the stick. I participate in a group that’s about song lyrics. Someone posts a line or two from a song, and we have to identify the tune. Sounds easy but it is not. And no, you can’t google the lyrics! Even if you wanted to they won’t turn up in searches.

I couldn’t help noticing this one guy who appeared to be a know-it-all (let’s call him Frank). He would post a lot of information about the song such as chart position and year. This annoyed me to no end, in part; because it appeared have a pompous tone to it. Smart aleck!


Since several of my Groovy Reflections team members participate in that group, I commented about it in our daily thread.  How was I to know that 
Frank was an old friend of one of my admins?


Oops.


I was assured that Frank was a walking encyclopedia as far as pop/rock music goes and that he was a bit on the nerdy side. He wasn’t being a know-it-all after all.


(blushing like a rose)

This taught me a valuable lesson! We’re all doing 60 different things at once, right? In the long run, we’re better off bringing the pace down a notch or two. Was my former co-worker doing anyone any good by blasting negativity at me? No. It wasn’t helping her to get the important things done. 


If she had taken one minute, just one minute, the whole situation would have been avoided. She disrupted my day with nonsense and wasted her time as well. And those around her that heard her yelling at me on the phone? Those folks had things to do as well; now they’re all bent out of shape too.


Now in the Frank situation I looked pretty stupid though thankfully my stupidity was confined to just a few people. Did I really have time to even bring up the subject of Frank? No. I should have shrugged my shoulders and moved along. 

• Slow down. Absorb. Understand. Take action: This could be responding or letting it go.
• Don’t waste time on all those little things if they’re not contributing to what you need to get done.

Keep your day moving and focused towards your goals, while remembering that stopping to smell the roses is more important than you think.


The band America sang about 3 Roses on their first album. Oh, and feel free to stop by and smell the roses on the website, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ ...thanks!