Every morning on school days I have the same exact routine.
6:30 - Alarm clock goes off, hit snooze and go back to sleep. 6:45 - Wake up 6:50 - Have cereal 6:55 - Wash face, brush teeth, go to bathroom 7:05 - Prepare my backpack 7:10 - Go downstairs and get into car 7:35 - Arrive to school 8:00 - Start school 3:20 - Finish school Now… if ANYTHING here goes wrong then we have a problem. Let me illustrate one example for you. I got to the kitchen, served some cereal on a bowl, reached for the milk and turned it upside down. I inhaled deeply, my eyes exposed to this horrific event opened widely, my teeth clenched. “Lali! Why didn't you buy another milk carton, now I can't have breakfast!” I said while leaving the kitchen irritated. I turned my direction to the bathroom door and tried to open it. LOCKED. “Hurry!” I shouted to my sister while banging on the door. “Just a minute”. Ten minutes go past and I started to get irritated again, and I banged on the door harder. My sister finally goes out. “You always take forever.” I said and shut the door loudly behind me. Everything went well until school started. I opened my laptop, signed-in to managebac, and scrolled down. BAM, there it was an 6/8 on my P.E. test. Seriously? I was sure I had gotten all the test answers right, I had studied all night! My P.E. teacher never gives me the grade I deserve! As I was reading “7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens” by Sean Covey, I came across this “Growing up in my home was at times a big pain. Why? Because my dad always made me take responsibility for everything in my life.” So I started think about my daily life to see if this quote was something that I could implement in it. Soon enough I noticed a pattern, I actually did always blame everything on others, when I was either disappointed, angry, or annoyed. The book kept telling me that I was responsible for my life. Habit one states “I am the force. I am the captain of my life. I can choose my attitude. I´m responsible for my own happiness or unhappiness. I am in the driver's seat of my destiny, not just a passenger.” This was certainly something that I didn't want to accept. Because that means that I need to change, not my sister, not my maid, not the annoying taxi driver, but me, myself, and I. And that my friends, scares the sh*t out of me. The same reason why it scares me to have to change is the same reason of why I do it first place. You see I really don't like change. This is because change means that there is a wildcard in play, you don´t know what will happen next and I start playing the “what if?” game. And usually I ask “What if I fail?”. The thing is that the fear of the unknown, the fear of failure is what impedes me from making positive changes about myself. And while I use all my energy and focus making up the worst case scenarios, why not imagine the best ones. Whatever happens, you will always be presented with new opportunities. After reading ahead, I learned that if I wanted to change I needed to go from a reactive person to a proactive person. To replace the whining for a deep breath and to replace the thoughts of “She ruined my day” to “Don´t let this get to you”. And slowly turn it into a habit, a habit of being a proactive person. Abraham Lincoln described it perfectly “People are just about as happy as they make up their mind to be”. Remember you are the force, not anyone else.
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Cristina BarclayCurrent eleventh grader at Colegio Franklin Delano Roosevelt, taking the IB diploma program. Archives
May 2016
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