Shopping Zen

For those of you who do not know me I do not like grocery stores. Put me in front of 100 people and ask me to give a speech and I am all in. Put me with those same 100 people in a grocery store with shopping carts and baskets and my stress level ratchets up 100 fold. It makes no sense but there you have it.

I generally avoid grocery shopping by having my hubby do it but today I had to go to the Safeway to pick up a few things for dinner. Can you say long line ups? The self serve line was 20 people deep. The cashier lines were easily 10 people deep. I had three choices: 1) waste time in line reading trashy magazines 2) get so stressed out that I risked my blood pressure or 3) take a deep breath (or many deep breaths!). I chose 3.

20 minutes later I was calm as calm could be. The lady behind me was on her way to a mini heart attack but I had discovered the zen of shopping! It was like having 20 minutes of meditation in the middle of a big crowd.

Now to learn how to transfer that over to work! My goal for this week is to stop and breathe whenever moments at work start to stress me out. I would love it if I could say that I never have those moments but, hey, I am human and I am dealing with 22 children between the ages of 5 and 7. Plus parents and colleagues and planning lessons and administration.... well, you get the idea! So, my mantra for the week: Stop and breathe!

Ms. Hughes