Good Morning Son

Good Morning Son,

I hope that you had a wonderful weekend and that you have a great week.

The weekend here was great. I had the opportunity to rake leaves in the yard. I call it an opportunity because I used to dread doing it.

When I think back on how I used to feel about raking the leaves I remember being irritated. You see, most of the trees in our yard are evergreen and don’t shed their leaves in the fall. That means that the vast majority of the leaves in our yard are leaves from some of our neighbors trees. This was because it seemed that some of my neighbors would never rake their leaves. As a result of that, the wind blows the leaves they didn’t rake into our yard.

I found myself getting irritated with one neighbor in particular  who never seemed to rake his leaves. Was I right to be irritated with the neighbors who created more work for me? I guess some people would say yes and some people would say no.

Fortunately, I changed the way I viewed the entire leaf-raking situation. Rather than being irritated with my neighbors, I decided to be grateful that they neglected to rake their leaves. Why? Because that gives me more leaves to rake and that in and of itself gives me an opportunity for a great series of workouts during the fall. So now, I look forward to raking leaves because I grow stronger each time I rake them! Now I even tell people how much I look forward to raking leaves in the fall.

The fall leaf-raking season has taught me a valuable lesson. That lesson is that dreading a task will never make that task go away and it certainly won’t make it any easier. In fact, the more you dread doing a task, the harder it becomes.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes that sums up my feelings about tasks, whether they are simple or difficult:

“It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.” – William James

Well, that’s it for now.

Have an amazing day!

Love,

Dad