Friday, June 5, 2009

IT'S ALL IN HOW YOU VIEW IT

Years ago, I was waiting for what I considered to be a very important phone call from my agent. He had left a message the night before stating that three shows that had been booked were now cancelled, and a television special I was in the running for, now looked bleak.

I immediately called him the next morning. His secretary said he was in a meeting. She assured me he would call me as soon as the meeting was over. Three hours went by, and still no call. I decided to call again. This time his secretary said he was out to lunch. I hung up the phone. I was very angry. All kinds of negative thoughts were going through my head. When thoughts go through my head - negative or positive - I have a tendency to repeat them out loud as I pace back and forth.
A few more hours went by and I had actually convinced myself that my agent didn't care about my needs or my career.

At that point I was overwhelmed by negativity and I started talking to the phone. Now, let me make this clear. I wasn't talking on the phone - I was talking to the phone. "Let me wait, will you? I don't deserve this kind of treatment! Who do you think you are?!" Even my dogs were looking at me as if to say, "Don't you have to pick it up first?"

Apparently my wife was observing the entire ordeal. Without missing a beat, she stepped in front of me, grabbed the phone, disconnected the wires from my desk and started yelling at the phone. "Yeah! Who do you think you are, treating my husband like that? Bad telephone! Bad telephone!" Then she took it and threw it in the garbage. I looked at her and said, "What are you doing?"
"Honey, I don't know what that phone did to upset you", she said, "but whatever it was, it will no longer stay in this house." Then she said, "Is the fax machine bothering you too? How about the computer? Because if they are, I won't tolerate it!" Then she literally yelled through every room in the house, "Now hear this! Can I have your attention please? All of the appliances, pieces of furniture, and all other inanimate objects! If you do anything to upset my husband, out you go! This is the law! I have spoken!!!" Then she quietly walked away. She burst back into my office, approached the phone that was in the garbage and said, "You're not so tough now are you?" She then turned to me, Kissed me on the cheek, patted my head, and said, "You see honey, you just have to learn how to take control!" And walked out of the room.

After watching this crazy woman running around the house, in a rampage, yelling at everything in sight, I noticed something was different. I was laughing. The question is - Why was I laughing at a situation that only seconds earlier had me emotionally distraught? The answer of course, is that my wife's crazy antics helped me pull myself away from this negative experience. She enabled me to see myself star in a scene from my own comedy movie. As a result, I realized I was sweating the small stuff and blowing the whole thing out of proportion and my emotional state made a complete turn around. Twenty minutes later, my agent called and I was able to listen to him and tell him my concerns, without the anger and frustrations.

It is truly amazing the power we can acquire when we allow ourselves the emotional luxury to pull ourselves away from our emotional scenes and give ourselves permission to view them from THE HUMOR PERSPECTIVE.