Fortune Cookie Friday: Stop, Look, & Act
Have you ever found yourself making the same mistakes over and over again? Do you wonder why? Perhaps you are blind to the truth.
I recently took some courses in CPR and Wilderness First Aid. It was a weekend of learning everything necessary to tend to a person(s) until more experienced help arrives if needed. The course opened my eyes to emergency aspects that I didn’t realize I knew.
One of the first things we learned was to assess the situation. We can’t just run headlong into an accident to help someone. We might end up becoming the next victim.
We can also gain a plethora of information from the scene that can help us decide what treatment is needed. Someone dripping and shivering next to a river will require different treatment than a crumpled person bleeding at the bottom of a cliff.
The key was to look at everything. All we had to do was open our eyes and gather information. After we assessed the scene, we approach and gain further information, like checking for consciousness, breathing, etc. Then we go into action.
When faced with reoccurring problems or mistakes, we inevitably question how we got ourselves into such messes. Unfortunately, we lie to ourselves. We convince ourselves that we can’t fix the problem, we can’t change. When in reality, it is hard to change, and we don’t want to accept the responsibility.
It is at these times we need to be personal emergency responders. We need to open our eyes to what is happening. We need to assess the situation and begin treatment—ASAP. We might not have all of the solutions, but we can prevent things from getting worse by changing our methods until we can get additional help.
Most importantly, we have to be honest with ourselves. The responsibility to change will ultimately fall on our shoulders. We will have to do some work, and it will be difficult. How do we change our habits? By breaking the bad ones.
So what should we do when we find ourselves slacking at school, spending beyond our means, or falling off the wagon? Stop. Look. Act. Treating our broken selves can be painful, but with the right measures, we can be on the mend in no time.
