I Got 99 Problems…

I got 99 problems and 86 of them are completely made up in my head!  That may be an overstatement.  But I do have my freak out moments!  Let me give you an example.  Recently, I began the registration process for my oldest to attend high school in the fall.  Can we pause right here?  How did she become old enough for high school?  She was just playing with dolls yesterday…wasn’t she?  Sigh.  I digress.  The registration process includes identification of electives.  And boy, have electives come a long way since I was in high school!  Her school electives range from Intro to Engineering to Female Body-building.  Yep.  Female. Body. Building. What happened to Home Economics and Shop?  Anyway, she had to rank her choices (1-5) and submit the form to the school.  Apparently, she knew this was part of the process and had already made her selections. Since she wants to be a video game designer, I figured her choices would include digital technology, engineering, robotics, etc.  Instead, these are her choices (in order of preference):

1. Latin
2. Theater
3. 2D and 3D Art
4. Intro to Digital Technology
5. Intro to Engineering

Why is it that what I think should be her two top choices, are her two bottom choices?  Now I had a problem.  How was she going to compete with the rest of the kids who have been coding since the age of 2 when she is focused on Theater, Art and Latin?  She may enjoy the classes but not be able to get into her career field.  I imagined her being led astray by some handsome theater student and running off with him to get married.  She would end up living in my house because government assistance would have been abolished by the government back in 2018 and she wouldn’t be able to make a living as a Latin spoken word artist on the subway.  And of course my husband and I would be stuck taking care of her family of 6 and we would never ever be able to retire.  See?  Problems.  In my head.

This entire line of thinking lasted approximately 5 minutes before I snapped out of it!  The truth is that she actually made good choices.  Latin will make her a master of language which impacts every part of her life.  She says she chose theater so she can get over her fear of public speaking and understand the behind the scenes process of making a production entertaining.  She clearly knows what she is doing.   And in the words of a good friend, “It’s just one class.”  So why did I temporarily slip into mind trippin’ anyway?  Its because more often than not it is easier to think of all that could go wrong than all that can go right!  We all know the power of positive thinking so why do many of us have negative thoughts – even sometimes creating situations that don’t even exist?  I know… YOU don’t do this at all. I am not talking to you.  I am talking to people like me and I know I’m not alone.  In fact, I know someone who was worried about developing a social media strategy for her business but she didn’t have a business yet!  I know someone worried about what will happen in a relationship with a guy who she has only been out with one time!

If you have those moments (like I do), this post is a reminder to slow down and stop trippin’.  Let’s try to focus on the positive and not the negative. We are not in control anyway (that’s another post).  If we must allow our minds to have an occasional freak out moment, let’s set a time limit. We can give ourselves 5 minutes to freak out and get over it.  Who’s with me?

Remember, we may have 99 problems but most of them aren’t real.  🙂