Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 315 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! Its awesome to be here with you guys. Im back from our sailing trip to the British Virgin Islands and man was that amazing. It was good to be back in the BVI. It was the first time since Covid because they had crazy regulations up until this last year. But its good to be back home always. Getting back into my routine. Especially my morning routine….
I love to get up early. 5 am is my favorite. So it’s dark and it’s quiet and I turn my lights on just the way I want them so that the back yard is lit up and my back deck lights are on and it all looks like a beautiful 5 star resort. It really does and I appreciate every moment of early mornings, I look around and was just so grateful. So this morning i sit down to have my coffee in my favorite spot overlooking the back and there’s a light shining in my eye not just one but two blue white spot lights coming from the neighbors house. We have lots of trees but they can’t possibly block these lights. So now I’m like what in the world. And I can feel myself getting irritated because of these lights. So now I sit up a little bit because I’m wondering what I’m going to do about those lights ruining my morning as I sit up a little straighter I realize now I don’t see them so much because my line of sight is different. And I also realized hey. You’re ruining your own morning. Because there may not be anything you can do about those lights but if something as simple as sitting up a little straighter makes it better, why not just do that? You see the more I focused on the lights the worse they got. Not literally they weren’t getting brighter but I was making it worse in my head. So I asked myself how do I give myself peace right now? For starters just sit up a bit so it’s not in your eyes and second stop focusing on it.
There’s always going to be things like that in life. There will always be things we can focus on that upset us and the more we focus on it the more upset we get and the bigger the thing gets. I was literally walking through scenarios where I somehow sneak on their property and aim them down so they aren’t shining so straight out or is there an ordinance or something about lights maybe the city could do something about it. That’s neighborly isn’t it? Both of those ideas were really bad. But once I sat up and it wasn’t directly in my eye I realized I was making it a lot worse because I just kept dragging on about it. It’s there. There’s nothing going to change that those lights are there. So how do I find peace right now? I sit up straighter and I change my focus. The lights are still there but I’m not focusing on them anymore so I’m just not letting it bother me. It’s part of my day today. We actually had the same problem on the front of the house when we first moved in. Our bedroom faces the front and our other neighbor installed the brightest spotlight ever and even with our woven shades down it would light up our room quite a bit. I thought about asking them to change the direction of their light back then too but we fixed the problem on our end. So I simply designed a Roman shade with blackout lining and wala problem fixed. That was 15 years ago. The light is still there too, we just took things into our own hands and now it doesn’t bother us at all.
We live in a world with other people. As long as that is the case which I hope is forever because it would be a lonely place, have you ever seen that movie with Will Smith where he’s the only human left alive in all of New York? He would have paid money to have a neighbor shining lights into his eyes.
And it may seem like I’m asking for us all to settle for less than we want. But that’s not what I’m saying at all. I couldn’t do anything about my neighbors lights at 5 in the morning but I was wrecking my own morning by focusing on them. By changing my focus I was able to remember that I’ve had this problem before and we overcame it, I can do it again. I also realized that just changing how I was sitting made it where I didn’t really see them. That was super easy to do.
What I’m saying is how do you find peace in a situation that is not to your liking but isn’t going to change not immediately anyway. How do I put the power back into my own hands instead of blaming my neighbor for having poor taste in lighting? I mean in a perfect world, I shouldn’t have to deal with their lights. Yeah. Ok fair enough but here I am having to deal with those lights. Now I can rail against those neighbors and be mad and go knock on their door asking them to change and rally the other neighbors because surely it’s annoying them too and now everyone is upset and focusing on those lights. And it would be justified. Or. In the moment, I can sit up a little straighter so I don’t see them and focus my attention else where and if the lights really bother me I can focus on creating a long term solution like we did for our bedroom with the blackout shade.
How do you get control of yourself and your life so that you stop being so bothered by other people. That neighbor has NO idea that light is bothering me. If they did I bet they would rectify it. Maybe, maybe not and that’s why it’s so important for us to always fix the problem on our end.
There’s always going to be things that don’t seem fair, there isn’t a human alive that hasn’t had to deal with their version of a neighbors light shining directly into their eyes. Maybe it’s your family member that doesn’t quite act the way you want or maybe it’s that friend and the awful way they parent or maybe it’s your coworker and how they are out to get you. Any of these things could be true but how do you get yourself to the point where you’re unbothered? You do that by fixing the problem on your end even if that doesn’t seem fair, what’s the downside? There’s not one because you are able to find peace in any situation and when you are able to find peace in any situation, you’ll see solutions will flow rather than simply allowing the problem to grow.
My challenge to you this week is in any challenging situation you have this week, pick one right? But in any of them, stop and ask yourself how do I find peace right now without anything having to change, how do I put the power of my emotions back in my own hands? You may not think that’s possible, but I assure you it is. How do I fix the problem on my end? I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days.
