Drama doesn’t always arrive in the form of a frenemy who knows exactly how to push your buttons, or that coworker who coughs and sneezes directly into the shared airspace as if germs are an act of community service.
It’s not limited to those little pockets of gossipers who stir discontent like it’s their side hustle, or even the teenager who can inflame your inner Scrooge with a single eye-roll.
Sometimes—more often than we like to admit—the drama is within us.
I experienced this in Technicolor this week.
It had been a wonderfully full stretch of speaking engagements; the kind of work that fuels every cell in my being. The first event was right here in San Diego with an open-hearted group eager to learn about empathy and customer service. A huge success!
I walked to my car floating… but that float had to turn into fast-forward. I needed to get home, repack, and hit the road for San Bernardino, normally an hour and a half drive. But today? Thanks to traffic patterns apparently inspired by Dante’s Inferno, it was closer to three hours.
I carefully packed while juggling a flurry of texts and emails that had come in during the San Diego event.
Distracted? Yes. Undaunted? Also yes. Off I went!
After the multi-hour crawl eastward, I pulled into the Hilton Garden Inn, exhausted but ready to unpack, get a good night’s sleep, and deliver The Public Servants' Survival Guide to the employees of the San Bernardino County Communications Department the next morning.
Laptop? Check. Outfit on hangers? Check.
But my turquoise suitcase?
Nowhere.
Not in the trunk.
Not in the backseat. Not under the seats (as if a suitcase could slither under there and hide).
It was the emotional equivalent of opening the refrigerator, finding nothing appealing, and checking again five minutes later in case snacks magically appeared.
There was no turquoise suitcase.
In that moment, I had a choice.
One option was a full-blown meltdown. I mean, how in the world was I going to face a new client without makeup, toiletries, contact lens solution, underwear, hairspray, shoes (yes, even my shoes were in that bag), or anything resembling “speaker-ready polish”?
Or...I could take a breath.
My first response? Negative self-talk.
"Are you KIDDING me? Brenda! What a bozo move."
But my own words, taught to thousands in the very training I prepared to deliver the next day rang in my heart.
Step away from the drama.
Beating yourself up when you're already down? It never helps. It only pours salt into the wound. And as I had just written in Grace for the Grinch, carrying a dark cloud over my head wasn’t going to help me show up for the San Bernardino team the way they deserved.
So I talked with myself. Are there any other singles out there who do the same? We make excellent sounding boards for ourselves when we are not inclined to vent to others and when we do not want to energize negativity further.
I simply asked myself:
Did this happen? Yes.
Can I change it? No.
But can I choose my response? Absolutely.
The very words I preach in every keynote rose in my spirit:
You can’t control what happens to you. You can only control how you respond to it.
And suddenly the question became:
Where might I procure every essential I just lost—makeup, shoes, toiletries, the whole nine yards?
The answer appeared like a beacon of hope:
Target.
I’ve never been so thrilled to see that red bullseye in my life, sitting just one mile from my hotel.
Yes, I was bone tired. Yes, the last thing I felt like doing was color-matching foundation or selecting emergency speaking shoes.
(Side note: Target’s shoe game? Surprisingly impressive.) But one hour later, I was back in my room, unpacking my brand-new toiletries and thinking: Drama dodged. Crisis averted.
Here’s the truth:
Things will
always go wrong.
Sometimes through no fault of our own. Sometimes entirely because of us.
But adding emotional fireworks doesn’t fix a thing.
Beating yourself up makes it worse.
And occasionally, those disasters make the best stories, especially when you’re a storyteller like me.
In fact, this very saga became one of the highlights of my keynote the next morning. (People love a good turquoise-suitcase saga.)
Will I always double-check for the suitcase from now on? You bet.
Will I let mishaps steal my joy? Maybe a little bit (hey, I'm human!) but as time goes on, I've learned to shorten the allotted time for pity parties and temper tantrums.
These bumps in the road make for excellent practice in stepping away from drama.
You can regulate your emotions.
You can turn a bad turn of events into a great story.
And you can protect your peace—even from yourself.
May your suitcase always make it into the car.
But if it doesn’t? Try not to fall to
pieces.
Step away from drama and protect your peace. e-wide paragraph and title styles, go to Site Theme.
