The Coyotes Might Get Me
There has been a coyote wandering the woods around our area over the last few years, and occasionally we see him or hear him somewhere in the distance. One of our children didn’t want to go out to wait for the bus this morning, because he was scared that the coyote would get him.
It’s not a big pack of coyotes, it’s maybe a few. They’re not huge or vicious, they’re actually kind of small and scruffy. But it struck me that too often I react just the same way and with the same flimsy reasoning. ”I don’t want to make that call” or “I don’t want to face that person” or “I don’t want to dig into that problem”. But when I look at it from an outside perspective, I see that the person on the other end of the phone is not so big and scary, the personal conflict is not a huge war, the problem is not the end of the world. I blow it all out of proportion in my mind, and it paralyzes me.
I know a lot of people who have this same issue – in fact almost everyone I know has it at some level.
The answer is perspective. We need to choose to see the situation objectively and deal with it as it really is. How do you gain perspective? What habits have you developed? What tricks do you use?
And by the way, the coyote did not get him this morning – he was perfectly safe as always.
