120 11111 00 W00 W00 W00 W00 Ways tays tays tays tays to Motivo Motivo Motivo Motivo Motivate Yate Yate Yate Yate Yourourourourourselfselfselfselfself
Crime? I’m losing sleep over this. This is ruining my
peace of mind and my life. Et cetera.”
By recognizing how pessimistic my thoughts were, I
was able to let the thoughts play completely out before
taking a deep breath and telling myself, “Okay. That’s
one side of the argument. Now it’s time to explore the
other side.” One of my favorite tricks for flipping my
mind over to the optimistic side is to ask myself the
question: “How can I use this?”
How could I use this incident to improve my rela-
tionship with my daughter? How could I make my rules
and requests more meaningful to us both? I began to
build my case for optimism. I realized that great rela-
tionships are built by incidents like these. They are not
built by theoretical conversations—but by difficult ex-
periences and what we learn and gain from them.
So I decided to drive a little while longer and let her
wait inside. I was sure that by now her sister had told
her that I was out looking for her, so she was now the
one pacing and anxious. Let her sweat a little, I thought,
while I continue to think things through.
I continued to reflect upon my past relationship with
Stephanie. One of the great aspects of it was Stephanie’s
honesty. She had always radiated a quiet and confident
kind of serenity about life, and found it easy to be hon-
est with her own feelings and honest with other people.
Whenever there had been incidents with other children,
teachers, or other parents involved in some misunder-
standing, I could always count on Stephanie to tell me
the truth. Asking her about what happened always saved
me a lot of time.
As I drove the dark neighborhood I also ran through
my happiest memories of Stephanie as a little girl, how
much I loved her and how proud I was of her when I