Applied Happiness Coaching

I heard a story this morning that talks about people and their obsession with carrying around all their baggage and junk, and taking all their frustrations out on the world around them. Too many people harbor too many frustrations with the life they lead every day. Learning to ditch the weight on your shoulders, and actually Apply Your Happiness, is something everyone could benefit from. Here’s the story:

I hopped in a taxi the other day, and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking lot right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his breaks, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was really friendly.

I asked, “Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!” This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, “The Law of the Garbage Truck.”

He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they’ll dump it on you. Don’t take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don’t take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets.

The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. Life’s too short to wake up in the morning with regrets. The point here is to ‘Love the people who treat you right, and pray for the ones who don’t.’ What a wonderful idea.”

This follows along with a therapy I created and started implementing in college. “The Bucket Theory” is my own take on people’s baggage weighing them down, and keeping them stuck in one place. It’s simple – list all your problems on stones. The bigger the problem, the larger the stone. Put them all in a bucket. Pick it up. Carry it with you. Heavy, right? What a giant burden to take with you everywhere you go. Time to let some things go. I started a system of identifying the root emotion for what you consider your problem to be. Once you identify it, own that emotion, and understand why you are bothered, you can let it go. Sometimes the bucket is so heavy that even looking into it at all you have going on creates more stones…and it never gets any better. People, listen – Rome wasn’t built in a day. Rome wasn’t even build one building at a time. It was built brick by brick. Stone by stone. Take out a stone at a time, and let it go. You don’t have to do this in one sitting…just start doing it right now, and eventually you’ll have a Rome of your own!

Namaste