Conway Daily Sun Article Dec 14, 2012
By Michael Kline
Did you know that researchers say half the big Black-Friday deals are less expensive two weeks later? Did your heart just start to race a little? How much do you want to confirm you got a real deal? We all love a bargain - not just cheap stuff, but a real value we can rest easy with and feel good about.
We don't like to overpay with our finances, yet we often over-pay with our emotions. You see, when we're facing anything that upsets us - say a difficult person at work, an especially challenging relative or maybe a simple event like other drivers or slow lines at the grocery store that irritate us. If only we had a price tag on each event that would tell us what each event should cost, we would know exactly how much to pay emotionally; how much energy and upset-ness we should put into a specific event. Then, it would be clear that any amount of excessive negativity and wasted emotion would be over-payment. We wouldn't get overly upset very often if it were this simple.
Now we just need a way to put a price tag on life's upsetting events, so we don't emotionally overpay. Forty years ago, Dr. Tom Miller created a system for this where he asks us to assign a bodily injury value to people, situations or events that upset us. His idea creates a "price" scale of 1 to a 100. On his scale, a 1 is a gnat bite, a 3 is a bruise, a 20 a laceration requiring stitches, and as you go higher on the scale the worse the injury becomes as you "progress" through breaking a limb, losing a limb, losing all limbs and ending with the 100 which is death. When we think of an event that upsets us, we can decide what we would pay to have that event gone from our life. We've all heard the figure of speech "I'd give my left arm to...", so if the person or event that upsets you is so bad, what bodily injury would you be willing to suffer to make it go away? A bruise? a cut? a broken arm? oh, that's what I thought - it's not as bad as all that.
To avoid overpaying when you feel yourself getting upset, simply give it a body part - or maybe it's only worth a hangnail, and say "This event is worth about a hangnail, and I can stand a hangnail." When you get more upset than something is worth you're overpaying.
It's not that we shouldn't get upset at all, life requires us to get reasonably and appropriately upset sometimes. But, when you let things go without getting overly upset, you never overpay. When you let things go without getting upset at all, you get a real bargain! Don't you just love a bargain?
Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.
By Michael Kline
Did you know that researchers say half the big Black-Friday deals are less expensive two weeks later? Did your heart just start to race a little? How much do you want to confirm you got a real deal? We all love a bargain - not just cheap stuff, but a real value we can rest easy with and feel good about.
We don't like to overpay with our finances, yet we often over-pay with our emotions. You see, when we're facing anything that upsets us - say a difficult person at work, an especially challenging relative or maybe a simple event like other drivers or slow lines at the grocery store that irritate us. If only we had a price tag on each event that would tell us what each event should cost, we would know exactly how much to pay emotionally; how much energy and upset-ness we should put into a specific event. Then, it would be clear that any amount of excessive negativity and wasted emotion would be over-payment. We wouldn't get overly upset very often if it were this simple.
Now we just need a way to put a price tag on life's upsetting events, so we don't emotionally overpay. Forty years ago, Dr. Tom Miller created a system for this where he asks us to assign a bodily injury value to people, situations or events that upset us. His idea creates a "price" scale of 1 to a 100. On his scale, a 1 is a gnat bite, a 3 is a bruise, a 20 a laceration requiring stitches, and as you go higher on the scale the worse the injury becomes as you "progress" through breaking a limb, losing a limb, losing all limbs and ending with the 100 which is death. When we think of an event that upsets us, we can decide what we would pay to have that event gone from our life. We've all heard the figure of speech "I'd give my left arm to...", so if the person or event that upsets you is so bad, what bodily injury would you be willing to suffer to make it go away? A bruise? a cut? a broken arm? oh, that's what I thought - it's not as bad as all that.
To avoid overpaying when you feel yourself getting upset, simply give it a body part - or maybe it's only worth a hangnail, and say "This event is worth about a hangnail, and I can stand a hangnail." When you get more upset than something is worth you're overpaying.
It's not that we shouldn't get upset at all, life requires us to get reasonably and appropriately upset sometimes. But, when you let things go without getting overly upset, you never overpay. When you let things go without getting upset at all, you get a real bargain! Don't you just love a bargain?
Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.
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