Garbage Trucks Psychology

How often do you let other people's nonsense change your mood?

Do you let a bad driver, rude waiter, curt boss, or an insensitive employee ruin your day? However, the mark of a successful person is how quickly one can get back their focus on what's important.

David J. Pollay explains his story in this way…
Sixteen years ago, I learned this lesson. I learned it in the back of a New York City taxi cab. Here's what happened. I hopped in a taxi, and we took off for Grand Central Station. We were driving in the right lane when, all of a sudden, a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his breaks, skidded, and missed the other car's back end by just inches!

The driver of the other car, the guy who almost caused a big accident, whipped his head around and he started yelling bad words at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean…he was friendly. So, I said, "Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!"

And this is when my taxi driver told me what I now call, "The Law of the Garbage Truck."

"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 if you let them, they'll dump it on you. When someone wants to dump on you, don't take it personally. You just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. You'll be happy you did."
I started thinking, how often do I let Garbage Trucks run right over me? And how often do I take their garbage and spread it to other people: at work, at home, on the streets? It was that day I said, "I'm not going to do it anymore."

Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets. Love the people who treat you right. Forget about the ones who don't. Believe that everything happens for a reason. Never let the garbage truck run over you…

Life is all about avoiding Cs

Confused??? :)
Yeah but its true; in order to lead a happy and fulfilling life; you have to avoid 3Cs in your life!!
They are:
a) Comparison
b) Complaining
c) Criticism

Comparison:
We are living in the competitive world today and our professional life is actually a rat race out there.
I am not sad because I have not bought a house for myself. May be I never felt the need for it as I want to be mobile for some more years; but it irks me a lot that most of my batchmates have already bought a house and only I am left.
I am ok with my raise but my colleague got more than me; I am equally qualified and experienced then why the disparity?
Why the hell I don’t have the killer looks that the other person have?
Sounds Familiar!!!!! :)
Trust me you are not the only one!!!!
Every person is a GOD’s unique creation with his/her own positives and negatives. Each one of us keeps on contributing to the universe all the time in our own unique way. Each one of us leads our lives in our own unique way irrespective of the fact how our relatives, friends and colleagues are leading.
Whenever we compare ourselves or our life with any one else; we don’t only insult ourselves but somewhere we challenge GOD’s creation and GOD’s decision for us. If you can follow the mantra – whatever happens; happens for good and GOD has some special plan for you and try to see the positive side of it; then nothing in this world can make you unhappy!!!!!
Feel special all the time because you truly are. If in doubt; ask your mother; how special you are and all your doubts will be gone :)
The only healthy comparison that I know of is - comparing how you are doing today Vs How were you doing yesterday?

Complaining:
Here; I would let Jack Welch do all the talking. As per his famous quote:
“Never Moan, Don’t be a victim. Either raise hell and change the game or get out of there.” – Jack Welch
Here again I will take most common example; couple of us keep on complaining about our respective jobs. The more we complain the more our brain register that the job in hand is not good. Simple logic – the more we talk; the more we think and eventually the more we believe. Our thoughts and words together will create so much of negative effect on our minds that we will stop appreciating interesting parts of our job as well.
So; either raise hell and get your profile / role (or whatever is troubling you) changed or quit the job and join somewhere else. But for your own sake’ don’t make complaining your daily routine. This holds true for any complaining routine that we might have.
Complaining obviously don’t help the situation but drain out all the positive energy from you. I am not sure whether you have noticed or not but you ought to feel weak and stressed after a long cribbing / complaining session. That’s because you tend to get angry; use bad words and get stressed while cribbing for something and these actions suck all your positive energy from your body.

Criticism:
Here I am talking about criticizing a person for the heck of it; I am not talking about the constructive feedback at all.
The most common example is whenever we criticize unnecessary when we discuss movies and bollywood stars. We don’t take it as just another entertainment service and attach our emotions with them. The ones we don’t like we criticize them whole heartedly. The ones we are criticizing is not even aware of it and is unaffected by it and we have ended up not only spending our precious time but we have converted our valuable positive energy into negative energy.
It’s good to give critical feedback to the person who is related to you; that’s how you can grow your team, your friends, and your family. Criticizing someone; who is not even related to you and becoming emotional about it; is a total waste of time and energy.
We don’t realize but every negative thought, word and action keeps on registering in our mind and start reflecting in our behavior and it has a very long term effect on us. By being nice to people we are not doing any favor to anyone; we are doing a big favor to ourselves. We are creating a very positive life and environment around us.
The way you behave; The way you think; The way you treat others– everything is inter-related and finally decides your life at large.

If suddenly you are feeling depressed without any reason; understand it’s the negative energy at work that you might have accumulated for some period of time.

Fokat ka Advice

There is this colleague cum friend of mine; who loves to give fokat ka advice and maintains a blog as well.

He is a happy go lucky person, I have never seen him agitated, angry, depressed, worried or sad. I have never heard him saying anything bad about anyone or cribbing about anything. He has no friends and no enemies and he is always very busy with himself without worrying about anyone or anything at all.

I keep on wondering, how can someone be like this? How can someone lead such an emotionless life? I mean you got to be attached to someone; you got to be angry with someone; you got to be feeling bad about something. How can you be giggling all the time?

I could not resist the temptation and finally one day I asked him; what’s the reason; why he is like that?He gave me the following mantras that he follows very religiously to be like what he is:

a) No Expectation policy

Have no expectation from any one – personal or professional. Don’t expect anything even from your parents. Accept the fact that everyone has his/her own life and no one has any time for you. The root cause of feeling bad most of the times is that someone failed to match your expectation. Having no expectation not only will save you from many misunderstanding; it will also give you exponential happiness when someone will do anything for you as you would have never expected that.

b) Be an extremist

Either believe in GOD or don’t believe in HIM at all. Don’t believe half heartedly. Either take complete control of your life and don’t expect anything from HIM at all or leave everything on HIM and stop worrying. It does not mean that you should stop making efforts but stop reacting on results. As you believe that nothing is in your control and the best thing you can do is to put in best efforts; then you will do just that and stay happy.

c) Chose an ideal and start behaving like that

Most of the times we are sad because we want to achieve something or we want to be like someone and we are far away from our goal. Start behaving like the person you want to be 6 months down the line today. This will keep you motivated to reach your goal faster and keep you confident today.

d) Work on yourself

Keep on working on yourself all the time – personally and professionally. The more you groom yourself the more you are accepted by other people and the more confident you feel about yourself. It’s a great self booster when you are accepted and appreciated by people around.So these 4 rules are his mantras to lead a happy and emotionless (read negative emotion) life. I am not sure how much is practical to adopt in life but yes I agree with all the points and I am going to work on them for sure.

Have written this post to pass on the fokat ki advice ;)