On my way to buy crap I didn’t need the other day, I tailgated a car that happened to have a great bumper sticker. All it had on it were the words, “It’s all Temporary.” That really hit me and made a lot of things click. Like when you’re trying to first ride a bike, and you keep falling on your ass, then all of a sudden you’re charging forward in a wobbly line. Kind of like that, but more useful.
A lot of times, we all get caught up with work and life stressors, and it gets us frustrated, stressed, and shortens our life. Globally, more than 3 out of 5 doctor visits are for stress related problems. Globally, 23% of women executives and professionals, and 19% of their male peers, say they feel super-stressed. While stress is useful in a fight-or-flight scenario, I find that most of the time I get worked up about something REALLY stupid (or someone really stupid). Seeing this bumper sticker put it all in its place. It’s all temporary. If you think about it, these three simple words make a lot of sense. It’s a common idea in Buddhism, and something that I’ve forgotten over the years. If some situation has you stressed out, just realize and understand that it’s temporary. It’ll be over in a few days, weeks, whatever, so really in the grand scheme of things it’s no big deal. Conversely, if it’s something good, also realize and understand that it’s all temporary so you should enjoy it and cherish it.
If you can get into that frame of mind, I find that it calms you down and makes difficult situations go down easier. While I still haven’t been able to stop all stress in my life, keeping these three words in my mind have helped tremendously.
When it comes to buying a house, especially the first one, max budget should very clearly determined. I have quite a few friends who bought something way above what they can afford and are getting screwed hard by it, no lube. 
So last week my friends and I decided to visit the Animal Rescue spur of the moment. We’ve been following a super long detour to get around some major highway construction (great job PDOT..great job) and were feeling and bit loopy. Immediately after parking in their minuscule parking lot, we saw a new intake German Shepherd in their outdoor area, looking dejected as homeless dogs tend to. Pulls at the heart, no? If that wasn’t enough, we walked in to see the rest of the dogs. Rows of dogs, locked up in concrete cages, with a blanket over a formed plastic bed. Then we came upon Halle, a 5month old Saint Bernard Great Dane mix. Sad, but full of puppy spirit, and great looking too. If we hadn’t left at that point I would have had another dog in the house. This situation should sound pretty familiar. But then I thought..why are there so many dogs in shelters? It sucks!
This post is the next in my How to Deal series (the previous being on dealing with 
I for one hate meetings. Unless they’re donuts and cookies meetings, where the topic is to eat donuts and cookies. But for those of us who work in an office, meetings are an unavoidable thing. You might be able to ninja your way out of a few, but the house always wins. My way of getting through them have been to zone out but keep alert for key words (such as ‘action item’ or ‘make 600 copies’). I know that probably isn’t the best way, but it gets me by usually. I’ve been lucky that there’s usually meeting minutes to give me a recap on all that I dazed on.
Your morals are probably the most important and valuable things you can have. In other words, they are priceless. And yet, we sometimes find ourselves in a position where we consider jeopardizing our moral values in order to get ahead in our careers. 
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