Settle for Compromise

Greetings and Salutations--
     How is everyone tonight? Excellent would be my desire for each and every one of you.. I was talking with my sister the other day and she is faced with the challenge of whether to move now (lease is coming up) or to put it off another year and continue to do a totally crazy (in my book) commute.. As we were talking and plotting out the pros and cons of should she stay or should she go, ( hey...isn't that a song..."should I stay or should I go now"  ;)  with one of her options she kept starting off the sentence with "I could settle for this..." and "If I do this, I'd be settling for..."  I finally pointed out that if she replaces the word settle with compromise it can alter the light in which she sees all of her options.. She doesn't HAVE to move.. What ever pathway she chooses, she can make it about COMPROMISE not settling.. As soon as I used that word it clicked with her and it was something she started to wrap her head around..
     I believe that even when we are faced with things that we have no choice about or in, the first thing I do, after I cool down and find my rational side, is to seek out where I can make any and all compromises.. I see this as a positive action.. Sometimes it may be picking your poisons but lets face it, some poisons you can survive from and some kill your ass dead in a nanosecond.. I believe that the word "compromise" sounds inherently positive.. Where as "settling" sounds like immediately it is the short end of the stick..  The word "settle" conjures up the mental pictures of what people look like when they are suck in a relationship they want out of but, for what ever reason, stay in.. "Settle" gives the notion that you have absolutely no choice in the matter and that you hate it already.. How can good feelings, thoughts, or pleasure come out of something that you already are at odds with?
     I have a book that I am reading "Why We Believe What We Believe" by Andrew Newberg, MD.. This thing is PACKED with neurologically why we do what we do.. Its is amazing! For some time now I have be mystified as to why we can't leave things opened ended.. I have mentioned this often in my blogs.. Why we have to assign an ending or value to an interaction with someone/event if we don't know the results..  That we assign a positive or negative thought to an unknown outcome.. Apparently it is a construct to being Human that basically ( as I am starting to understand it)  in order to make sense of our world that would otherwise be too chaotic to handle (neurologically), we constantly search for meaning and understanding.. We do this from the time we are born.. To leave things "open" goes against what we are "wired" to do.. You can't make sense of something if you don't know the outcome of an event/interaction..
     So when I think of it this way, it is starting to make sense.. We have to, by our nature know the outcome.. So why not set your default to positive outcomes instead of negative ones? That it will all work out and if it doesn't, you will roll with it.. You will take it as it happens, not as what you imagine it (the move at work, the job interview you went on and are waiting to hear back, the argument you had with a friend that isn't resolved, the date you went on, but haven't gotten "the call" yet, etc etc) So you can either assign positive endings while waiting or you can pick the negative and be "prepared" for the worst..I believe that it is always the wining choice to determine that things will work out and everything will be great..
     With a positive energy that emanates from deep within you, things that you never thought possible will start to happen.. You will begin to see and migrate towards great things happening because you expect them.. It is easy to say when you expect bad things to happen they usually do.. Why not accept if you expect great things to happen they will more often that you ever imagined.. After all, if you view most situations framed in the context of settling for the least shitty choice, doesn't that still leave you with a shit choice?


Tootles :)
Heather