Bonjour My Royal Friends!
I’m Princess Diane Von Brainisfried and it’s a joy to welcome you into my kingdom where positivity rules and humor abounds. Here, I share tips and secrets for living your royally happy, radically fulfilled, richly meaningful life!
Today I’d like to talk to you about how even small events can help you shift from a negative mood into positivity if you let them. Even something so simple and banal as a litter sign helped me shift from a negative vibration into positivity. Liter-ally.
I discovered this magic one sunny morning on a hunt for the perfect marble for my new kitchen counters and island.
I took the hour-long ride north to a marble fabricator that my designer recommended, well aware that going north somehow always means stuff gets more expensive.
My GPS told me that I had arrived at my destination. I pulled into a long narrow One Way Only drive that led to the back of a large pink building that looked like an Indian temple. It abutted a small, sequestered parking lot. I thought, that’s a creative building for a marble warehouse. I can see a connection. Marble. Indian temple theme. Taj Mahal and all that.
Except there was no connection. I was in the wrong parking lot. It actually was an Indian temple.
My annoyance of being in the wrong parking lot was abated by the fact that I had parked in front of a fence which was completely dressed in a tangle of vine greenery and honeysuckle flowers.
Those flowers sent a sweet and heavenly fragrance my way, for a moment…until it was overpowered by the world’s biggest fragrance buzz kill.
In front of me was a huge, green septic tank cleaning truck that was blocking the only exit out of the lot. The smell being evicted from its big green belly was twenty times more ugly than the time I left a bag of Trader Joe’s Free Range Cage Free hardboiled eggs in my car by accident…mid summer…for a week. At that moment, I wished I had picked up a bag of clothes pins with those eggs–for my nose.
I noticed that the driver-side door of the truck was open and the ignition was running, but that no one was in the truck. There was nobody else around either. I figured someone would be out in a minute so I could escape the lot and its stench and go on my way. No such luck. I was trapped!
Now, I’m pissed. At many things. My GPS for lying to me-to my face. At myself for believing her. At the one-way sign that’s keeping me from backing up. At the behemoth septic tank cleaning truck that’s blocking my escape. At the fifty-megaton egg-fart smell. At the marble fabricator (if I ever got there) for the “North tax.”
My only escape at that time would be to go back out the way I came in, which would mean going the wrong way down a narrow corridor, invisible to cars who might turn into it and crash with me head on. I decided to exit my car and enter the back entrance of the temple to see if anyone knew where the truck driver was.
….Well that didn’t go well. No one was in sight. But I heard chanting. Somewhere. Very ohhhm sounding. Sounded holy. I figured I ought not to be interrupting holy chanting to ask if anyone could move the smelly waste truck blocking my exit.
Upset, I walked back toward my car. I was going to have to take desperate measures and go out the way I came in. Dangerous. Illegal. Necessary.
As I got into my car, I noticed a small sign affixed to a post in front of the honey suckle mayhem. What it said changed the energy of my whole being. My agitation vanished. My negativity vanished. My grumblings about North people vanished.
The sign read: “THANK YOU FOR NOT LITTERING.”
How could a litter sign possibly be significant enough, powerful enough, effective enough to shift my mood from negativity to positivity?
That’s because the sign didn’t say “No littering.” The sign didn’t say, “Please don’t litter.” The sign didn’t say, “Fine for littering $500.” All of those signs assume you are inclined to litter. All of those signs cater to the false idea that humans are inclined to do the wrong thing, unless you ask them not to. This sign was different. This sign in the honeysuckles assumed the best of humanity!
This litter sign believed in the default mode of goodness in people. This litter sign was hopeful and positive. This litter sign thanked you for refraining from littering, because it knew that’s just how you roll. This litter sign presumed that the essence of your soul was good.
This was a “sign” of trust.
My huff and puff attitude evaporated. The sign reminded me of my better self and brought me back to it. The self that is filled with positive energy. The self that forgives the stuff about people that makes her mad. The self that doesn’t go around in huffs and puffs. The self that this sign was tawkin’ about!
I got into my car and drove out the wrong way. And the marble? Fahgheddaboudit. I got Quartz.
Ta ta for now!
“Live your royally happy life!™”
x♥x♥x♥,
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Dame Diane Uniman, Aka Princess Diane von Brainisfried, is an attorney turned motivational speaker, certified positive psychology life coach and award-winning writer. She wrote Bonjour, Breast Cancer-I’m Still Smiling…Wit, Wisdom, and Optimism for Beating the Breast Cancer Blues.