Declare your life a Drama Free Zone – what a brilliant idea! Here is what it comes down to: People are going to disappoint us. They are going to make mistakes. They are going to hurt us and do dumb things. That is part of life. And it is up to us to forgive them and move on.

Recently I was negotiating a business transaction with someone. The negotiations went back and forth until we agreed on a written up price in an email. Then when the paperwork was sent to me the person totally went back on the price they had agreed upon and suddenly tried to up the price substantially. I was stunned. It is beyond me how anyone can conduct business that way…more important, I can’t imagine how someone could care so little about honoring their written word. And yet they clearly didn’t.

The fallout from that situation created a chain reaction of new decisions that had to be made on my part. At first I was angry and upset. Then I was stressed out about having to try and find another solution since this first transaction was no longer something we could accept after the person had changed the pricing so significantly. Then came the feelings of disappointment that people aren’t more trustworthy… all those feelings were creating drama and let’s face it, drama is NEVER fun.

So I decided “that’s it” – I am hereby declaring my life a Drama Free Zone. I can’t control that someone did something dishonest that was causing all these issues… but what I could do is determine that I would not let it drag me down. Sure things weren’t going to work out the way we had hoped, but there was nothing we could do about that. You can’t force someone else to be honest. So that meant all we could do is come up with a new plan and move forward with the best alternative plan we can come up with. We had to stop looking back and stop thinking “if only….” because that wasn’t going to make a lick of difference…we had to put what happened behind us and start finding a new solution. Because that’s what you do if you want your life to be a Drama Free Zone.

Like I said in the opening paragraph – people are going to disappoint us. They are going to make mistakes and hurt us and do dumb things. We can’t change that….we can only learn from those situations and when necessary, remove those people from our lives going forward. Then we have to decide that life is too short to let anything get us down – then move ahead fully expecting that if we do our best and continue to act with integrity that things will always turn out better for us in the end…even if we have to go through a little more pain getting there…the result will be worth it.

Remember:  “Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out!”

Have a great day!

~Amy Rees Anderson