Sunday Night, I got home late after a long trip. I had a little time to spare before going to bed and decided to use this time to solve all my problems.
But before I explain how to solve all life’s problems in seconds, a bit of back story.
Around 9 years ago, my sister came over to my house at around 11:00 am one day and we had the following conversation:
Me: Oh, I just got out of the shower.
Sister: Why are you just getting out of the shower at 11:00?
Me: Well, I woke up earlier and had a shower, but my morning was going really badly, so I decided to just pretend the morning hadn’t happened, take another shower and start over my day.
My sister must have thought this was a fine idea because we quickly carried on talking about other things.
Some of you may be wondering, “What could have possibly happened between 8:00 am and 11:00 am?” I don’t remember but it was enough to make me want to do a complete do-over, and my own production of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind a full 3 years before the movie came out.
So basically, Sunday night, I decided to resurrect, “Oh let me just take another shower Carol.”
I had completely forgotten about her and It truly is a shame that I’ve wasted the last 9 years actually trying to solve my problems.
I guess this came up because I was thinking about someone who has a way of rubbing me the wrong way. Then, all of a sudden, “Go have another shower Carol” buried deep within me spoke up and said:
Shower Carol: Why don’t you just forget it even happened?
Mighty Carol: What do you mean?
Shower Carol: Just pretend it never happened at all.
Mighty Carol: What will I tell myself about it?
Shower Carol: About what?
That was the moment I found the solution to all life’s problems and worrisome thoughts which occupy way too much real estate in my mind.
Just press
The truth of the matter is that worrying about the annoyance adds nothing to your life. I am not trying to sound deep or anything. I stole that quote from Jesus. He said it. So, whether you choose to dwell on the problem or not dwell on it, just don’t think you’re accomplishing anything by thinking about it 500 times a day.
A day later, I decided to take it one step further and add a slight variation. I have to say that so far, this strategy is going extremely well! This is the variation: Sometimes when a program on your computer is not cooperating, you press CTRL+ALT+DELETE.
Doing this opens up Task Manager and then you click on the problem program and remove it from the list by clicking End Task. So, today, whenever a certain “Issue” popped into my head, each time it popped into my head, I would just say to myself CTRL-ALT-DELETE.
At the time of this writing, I am 3 days into this and I’ve never been so happy. Here’s a demo of how it works:
Inner Chatter: It’s pretty obvious he’s lying, And I swear the next time….
Simply cut the thought off right there mid-sentence with CTRL+ALT+DELETE and move on to thinking about something else.
Inner Chatter: Oh, I’m so sick and tired of…
Inner Chatter: I don’t even know if I should bring it up becau..
I really have to say that giving up thinking about rubbish might just be one the highlights of 2010.
These buttons are just incredibly handy!
CTRL+ALT+DELETE! CTRL+ALT+DELETE!
This single decision has only added joy and years to my life.
I am sure it will result in me living a fuller life, free up time to smell the roses, swing from trees and get so much more out of life.
Shower Carol reloaded is Back!!
This article was originally published on April 27th, 2010.
