Today I learned that a man named Bud loves donuts.

I was in a meeting when, all of a sudden, a bright young executive remembers that their company for some reason has a stash of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts stored away for just such an occasion. (I can never remember exactly how each given brand spells the word “donuts,” and having been raised on “Dunkin’ Donuts” I personally lean toward the version with fewer silent letters, however coarse it may be spelling-and-pronunciation-wise.)

The exec brings in the donuts in their glazed and green-polka-dotted glory, and proceeds to be the very first to grab a napkin and plant a sugar pastry right in front of her. A breach of standard etiquette, to be sure, although the transgression is offset by the simple fact of her being one of only two women present in the room. Regardless, by the time the donuts come around my way I’m happy to oblige, seeing as there are twelve donuts and only like ten people in the room anyway, and half of them seem to be the type to be watching their body fat or blood sugar or cholesterol levels or something of the sort.

“Bud” is one of these guys. He’s obviously quite fit, but also obviously getting to the point in life where fitness can only do so much good before grey hairs and a tiny bit of a belly start creeping up on you unless you go bald and anorexic and basically become Skeletor. So Bud here has opted against the Skeletor lifestyle and instead remains successfully health-conscious, possibly of the biking type (I could definitely imagine him on a road bicycle in some sort of taxicab-yellow Spandex and a serious Lance Armstrong-type helmet). And when the donuts come around to him he sort of looks around anxiously, as if to ask the similarly aging but less similarly health-conscious guys around him (each putting on their share of pounds but not their share of road-bike-miles by the look of it), “um, am I the only one who wants one of these?”

He double-checks. Places the box strategically between himself and one of the other guys. Looks at the guy. Looks at the box suggestively. Looks back at the guy. Raises his graying eyebrows.

Then he puts on this look of near-infinite, like definitely asymptotic to some enormously large amount, sadness. I could literally imagine him being four or five and practicing in front of a mirror to get this look just right so next time Mommy and Daddy tried to cut little Buddy off from the donuts he’d have the perfect weapon to whip out on their poor little instinctive-child-care brains and retinas.

Unfortunately for Bud/Buddy, nobody but me was watching. And it’s in a moment like that where you can learn more about a person than you would from anything they’d admit to you. It’s in a moment like that where you remember why it’s so useful to just keep an eye on other people, even when they’re talking neither to or about you. People’s faces give them away all the time, and it’s key to at least know where and when to look for it.

(Image credits: mmmfruit and glasscircus)

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All throughout life our parents tell us, “You’re my little angel – don’t listen to what those big bullies told you. Everyone loves you.”

Life goes on and we realize we are not loved by everyone. But we aspire towards perfection and seek love everywhere. In our journeys we forget that sometimes the people closest to us can be the ones who have the worst effects on us. You may think you would never willingly spend time with an individual who was bad for your self-esteem, but many times a bad friend is so very well disguised as a “concerned friend.” You know, the “friend” who tells you that you deserve to be loved, but that one more cookie might hide the real you from all those people.

This isn’t to say that true teasing and honesty are bad traits for friendship.  But someone whose comments always come laced with  negativity or bitterness may not add any value in your life.

You spend most of your life with, maybe, five to ten truly close friends, plus the family you can stand. It’s so important to pick the right people before investing so much of your life in them. Remember, you get to choose who you bring into your life. You get to decide who influences you.

Your time is precious and you are fragile. Every moment counts either towards your happiness or deducts from it and the people you decide to spend it with make the biggest difference.

Ever since the dramas of middle school, I have spent a lot of time wondering what is important in a friend. What should I value most? And how do I stop a bad relationship from forming once I’ve learned I that someone is hurting my happiness?

These questions resurfaced for me recently when ­­­­­­I was standing in a room of screaming “friends” and it became overwhelming to balance my thoughts against their barrage. I realized at that moment that something important to me in a friend is mindfulness and that these friends just didn’t have it. So I got my emotional bags and left.

I was fed up with disappointment. I finally realized that I had only projected the attribute I most value onto them. Facing the truth was heart wrenching, but I am over it. I’m still standing!

(photo credit: carbonNYC)

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We’re always fighting about something. When we stop and think about it, though, we usually find that the energy we spent fighting could have solved the problem completely. One of the most common annoyances we both face is one neither of us can avoid – the other person.

We all make mistakes. And other people seem to make even more than we do. But the worst mistakes – and the most annoying – are those everyday oopsies made by the people closest to us, the people we’re stuck with. So when one of us (”What do I do, honey?” … “What don’t you do?”) playfully grabs the other and causes a family heirloom to go skittering under the couch, the other wants to flip shit.

But as we all know, shit flipped into the air tends to hit the fan, and the next thing we know the heirloom is buried under piles of throw pillows living up to their names. At this point, it’s difficult to cool down. Someone huffs their way out of the room, the thrown pillows are dug through, and the heirloom is found in less time than it took to have the tiff. What did this accomplish? You’ve wasted your time, energy, and  now both of you are upset.

Instead of getting angry right off the bat, sit down, take a couple deep breaths, and think before you speak. Put things into perspective. This isn’t to say, “don’t be angry,” but trust that the other person understands what happened. Maybe they don’t understand fully, but it’s okay. Remind yourself that they didn’t do it on purpose. They’ll probably even try and help fix whatever went wrong.

Often in our relationship, it helps to collect ourselves for just five minutes. And often, the person who screwed up will fix things in those five minutes without a single cross word. It’s not easy, but a touch of self-control goes a long way for us. For the hurt person, it really helps to remember that the mistake  really was just a mistake – that the other person didn’t want to hurt you.

For the mistake-maker, it helps to take the perspective that the anger isn’t directed at you. The anger is directed at what happened, and that can probably be fixed within those five minutes.

These strategies can help avoid mistakes before they even happen, too. Think about the last time you were in traffic and the driver was getting a bit too close to the car in front of you. Shouting at them didn’t help. It just startled them or made them more tense. Instead, you can just let go and trust in the other person. No matter the situation, you’re not the only person who has a stake, whether it’s emotional or material. The other person wants to avoid an accident just as much as you do.

It’s important to take those five minutes before spending a lot of energy making everyone feel worse. In those five minutes, the problems you thought you needed to fix will often fix themselves. By all means, speak up if you really need to, but when you’re coming from a place of anger, frustration, or annoyance, stop and think. “Is what I’m about to say going to make things better or make things worse?”

(Photo credit: petite corneille , olga sgr!, kezzaroo, and McAzadi)

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