“The Lion King” and “Aladdin” Get the Best of a LaGuardia Situation

Travel delays are never fun, but from time to time they are bound to happen. You can’t expect the weather to cooperate every time you fly, and better they should repair those mechanical issues before you fasten your seat belt.

I’ve learned to take a deep breath, chill, remind myself it’s not the end of the world, and then look for a way to appreciate whatever extra time I’m now spending in the airport. Reading always works for me, so does getting in some phone-chat time with girlfriends, or cleaning out my inbox if all else fails.

But recently, the Broadway cast members of “The Lion King” and “Aladdin” took appreciating your unanticipated down-time in an airport to a whole new level. During their six-hour weather delay in New York’s LaGuardia Airport, they had a sing-off! It was truly an extraordinary event, captured on someone’s phone, and uploaded to YouTube [https://youtu.be/6ajHZWDP_Vk].

What a choice these cast members made! Rather than bemoan the hot, crowded conditions of the airport, rather than complain endlessly about what the delay meant to their plans, or how bored they were, or anything else, they turned to what they could value in that moment, they started singing. First one, then another, then the whole cast of “The Lion King” joined in to sing songs from their award-winning show. Whereupon the “Aladdin” cast responded with their songs--including an amazing free-style rap by James Inglehart, who plays the Genie in the show.

Not only did the cast members of these shows counter the potentially adverse effects of negativity on their well-being, they uplifted everyone within earshot in that airport! You can see the smiles on other passengers’ faces as their mood changed from “Oy ve” to “Hurrah”! Because everyone was in the same weather-delay boat; it took deliberate, conscious focus to switch from ain’t-it-awful to better thoughts and feelings. Something the cast members accomplished with ease.

Contrast this with the behavior I witnessed a few weeks prior at another airport. My flight was mechanical-issue delayed for three hours, then canceled entirely. We were transferred to a different flight, which meant another delay of about two hours. OK, such is life. Finally, we were in line to board our designated aircraft, just waiting for the previous passengers to get off the plane, and the few minutes required for the cleaning crew to do their thing.

A man standing at the head of our line was vigorously complaining to the ground attendant in charge of taking our boarding passes about how long it was taking the previous passengers to deplane. How he’d had it with all this waiting, and what a horrible airline this was, and what horrible service. There was more of course. I stood there, with my jaw dropped. Here the airline had kept us safe (off a plane not fit to fly), found us seats on another flight, we were about to board, and the man was first in line. It was probably one of the finest examples of complete lack of appreciation I have ever seen. At the very least, the man could have valued his position at the front of the line, and appreciated the fact that he only had another ten minutes, tops, to wait before getting to his seat.

I don’t even want to know what that man’s heart condition is like. What I do know, is that those Broadway cast members, with their ability to switch their focus to what they could appreciate, what they could do--sing!--as opposed to what they couldn’t do (get on a plane right then) had their hearts not only in the right place for the joy they brought themselves and everyone else in that airport, but also in the very best place for their long-term health and vitality.

    Now don’t you wish you’d had that travel delay?!

What Would (Insert Name of Favorite Action Hero) Do?

Your most recent attempt to persuade your boss of how much you deserve that raise/bonus/perk landed in the unfathomable depths of his "No way no how" with barely a ripple. You are depressed, disgusted, and yes - truth be told - massaging your hurt ego with liberal doses of self-pity.

Which brings to mind all the times your boss has been less than appreciative of your skills, talents, efforts, unpaid overtime, etc.  Like always! And down the road of history you go, your self-pity growing with each remembered slight until, virus-like, it pervades your whole being and you can barely function.

Now there’s a recipe for disaster! No doubt you’ve been wronged, and I'm sure it’s not the first time. But if you keep thinking about it, reviewing it over and over again in your mind, you’re simply replaying a very bad movie ad nauseam.

You’re way too savvy to pay good money to see a movie you hate repeatedly. So why are you going back to that hated/awful scene in your life obsessively?

Here’s the thing: the more you focus on "ain’t it awful" the less you see opportunities for something better. What you focus on, whatever you give your attention to, determines what you perceive. When you’re fixated on negative past experiences with your boss, you are missing what might benefit you here, now, in your present. You aren’t even considering what possibilities lie in the future - or in the next department over, or in that free-lance gig someone mentioned, or . . . you get the drift.

Get smart! Be like the hero/heroine of your favorite action movie. Shuck off the slime of self-pity, take a deep breath, and turn your gaze to what you want, not to what you didn’t get.

Put your imagination to work figuring out better ways to approach your boss, or influence him/her to that bonus or whatever it is. Get your solution mojo in gear and never ever look back.

Want a Miracle? Shift Your Perception!

Losing is painful. It doesn’t matter what - a job, a promotion, your health, a lover, a spouse - it’s painful. Sure, the pain is greater, the greater the loss, but whenever we lose something, we feel it deeply.

A friend of mine, a trial lawyer by trade, recently lost a big case. He’s not in the habit of losing trials, for him this was a most unusual experience. But what intrigued me was his attitude about it: “I can see where I made some mistakes. I know it’s hindsight and all that, but I seriously misjudged how the jurors would look at certain facts. I can’t wait for my next trial - I have some thoughts on what I could have done differently, and I want to see how they will play out.”

His is an optimist’s attitude. A miracle-making attitude. One that practically guarantees success. Oh, maybe not every time, but more often than not. It is well established that optimists succeed beyond their actual aptitude and talents - all because of their attitude.

Many lawyers, in his position, would have expended their efforts laying blame somewhere: on opposing counsel for underhanded tricks, on the Judge for being biased toward the other side, on the jurors for “not getting it,” on their trial team for being inefficient, or on themselves. My friend, however, simply assessed his work, figured out what was missing, and was rarin’ to go on the next trial - so he could once again, win.

All it took was a shift in perception, what Marianne Williamson* defines as “a miracle.” Or, to my way of thinking, a shift in perception (how you see the loss) lays the groundwork for a miracle, for something to happen that will be better than what was expected.  By moving off the blame-game, and choosing instead to learn from the experience (the shift in perception), my friend put himself back on the success track.

When you look at your loss, whatever it is, as permanent and all-encompassing, then sure enough, you’ll feel devastated and unable to let go and move on. If, on the contrary, you look at your loss - be it the loss of a job, a spouse, a client, your savings - as temporary, something to learn from - then chances are excellent that you will be able to move on to even better things; to a “miracle.”

The only change is in how you perceive the event, the loss. And that, unlike the loss itself, is totally within your control. Buck against it though we may, we can always control what we think. No, it’s not necessarily easy. I find it takes considerable effort to move my thoughts off the comfort of wound-licking and self-pity to thoughts that will generate a better future. But it’s doable.

And knowing that all it takes is a shift in perception, in how you view things, makes the seemingly impossible “miraculous,” possible.

* Williamson, Marianne (2009-10-13). A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles (p. 9). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Use Your Mind to Combat Killer Stress!

You hate your boss, you hate your work, your co-workers drive you crazy, and you’re convinced you’re underpaid even if you weren’t horribly overworked. You’re stressed all the time! Small wonder. . .

You’re tired, achy, rarely get a peaceful night’s sleep, and now you’ve come down with a cold! Which you seem to catch more and more frequently, plus there’s your stomach upset and now some sort of stupid rash on your neck. All of which you are convinced is due to your blankety-blank job.

Yes and no. Sure, if money fell out of the sky and you didn’t have to go to work, you might not be stressed and subject to all those pains and ills. But, here’s the thing, your miserable job itself has less to do with your stress and afflictions, than how you think about your job.

I know, not what you wanted to hear. It’s soooo much more gratifying to blame it all on your boss, co-workers, etc., but the truth is, you are in charge of your thoughts, and it is your thoughts that determine, to a surprising degree, how you feel emotionally and physically.

Science tells us that every second, a massive information exchange is occurring in your body, facilitated by neuropeptides and their corresponding receptor sites, linking all of your bodily systems - your heart, your lungs, your digestive tract, etc. - and your mind. Your thoughts and emotions are in fact cellular signals that are involved in the process of translating information into physical reality.

This close interaction between thought, emotion, and bodily systems explains why recent widows are twice as likely to develop breast cancer, and why chronically depressed individuals are four times more likely to get sick.

On the plus side, it also explains why optimists - people who see the glass half full no matter what - are healthier, and why they live longer.

So what’s it to you and your dismal job situation?

It’s all in how you think. Whatever is going on, you can choose more positive thoughts about the situation, or more negative ones.

With your current work issues, you could choose to think “Well, my boss is over-bearing and difficult, but I’m smart enough to find a way to do my job properly anyway. Maybe I can reach out to a mentor to help me out,” and “My co-worker is a pain, but I don’t need to give her more attention. She probably has something dreadful going on in her life. I can just nod, and bury my nose in my work when she comes around.” And “Granted, I’d prefer a different job, so maybe instead of moaning about it, I can improve my skill set and see if I can’t get a position more to my liking.”

You’re not denying your current reality, you are simply looking at it from a different point of view. A positive one.

In other words, choose to think thoughts that are constructive and support you in your desire for happiness and success. Not only are you more likely to actually accomplish these goals, but your stress levels will decline, and with that, your physical and mental well-being greatly improve.

Not a bad deal, wouldn’t you say?!