Every time someone walks into a room, they bring their own weather.
Some people smile at you and you feel warmed just by their attention. Spend time with them and you get a sunnier perspective on the landscape that you are walking together. When you’re with them, you feel stronger to face the challenges.
Some people usher in a cold front. You wrap your sweater a little tighter around you to insulate yourself from their chill. Others bring cloudy skies, with a chance of rain. Unpredictable, stormy, or just overcast.
Yes, a happy person chooses their own barometric pressure. And you can tell the temperature in their spirit the minute they walk into the office, the book club or the party.
Now there are plenty of good reasons why sunny days turn cloudy, but the person who has learned to navigate their own weather welcomes a whole lot of other people to walk with them in the rain. How do they do that? Among other things, they adopt three sheltering attitudes:
- They consider others. When they walk into the room, a happy person doesn’t think, “Well, here I am. Please love me.” Instead they get their eye on someone in front of them, walk toward them with body language that says, “Well, there you are! I was hoping you’d be here.” They set their own insecurities aside and serve another. In so doing they take the pressure off themselves—to measure up a certain way or out-do someone else. They are free to make someone else feel braver, and not surprisingly, they get there themselves.
- They know how to share their life. One year for my birthday, I bought myself counseling. It’s funny now, but at the time, I knew I needed to work through some huge hurts and changes in my life and I wanted to spare my girlfriends another lunch talking about the situation. I wanted to share my life with them, but the whole of my life—not just the sad parts. I care about my girlfriends and they care about me and we’ve learned that sharing includes, but is not limited to, “help me get through this.”
- They say thank you. Gratitude just makes you sunnier. With practice, anyone can see the good that even rain brings. Gratitude sets an altitude for living. When you’re most grateful, you just find it easier to breathe. It’s a curious fact—often the people who have suffered the most are also the most grateful. In their struggle to survive, they see something beautiful and precious that gets missed in routine living. I think they get a glimpse of the blue skies above the clouds.
What’s the forecast today? You tell me. We all struggle with insecurities, with heartache, with challenges, but we can also choose our own weather outlook.
Makes you wonder, when people see you coming do they grab their umbrella or sunglasses?
