Making a Difference
Make a Difference Day | Celebrated Annually on the 4th Saturday of October
written by Kate Lamprich
“Make a Difference Day” was created by USA Weekend Magazine in 1992 to offer community support and encourage volunteerism across the country. Since its inception, Make a Difference Day has echoed in over 30 countries and over 30 million volunteer hours.
Here at Essential Health and Wellness, we give back to the community on a regular basis with our Oncology Support Program. We offer all of our services on a sliding scale, with a reduced cost down to 50% of our regular price for any individual who has been diagnosed with cancer.
Another way that we can all make a difference EVERY day; is to dump our ‘garbage’ in an eco-friendly way, and I do not mean taking your trash and recycling to the curb once a week.
Imagine that you are walking down the street, minding your own business having a pleasant day. You are enjoying the moment, listening to the sounds of nature or maybe you have head phones in listening to your favorite music.
Suddenly someone walks right in front of you and you nearly trip over them. You are snapped out of your zone by their inconsideration. Then they start yelling at you for being rude and pushing them.
What do you do now?
A. Yell back at them for being an inconsiderate jerk.
B. Storm away, mumbling under your breathe about how big of a jerk they are.
C. Pause where you are, allow them to keep on walking and get out of your space. Take a deep breathe, and shake off that experience physically, emotionally, and energetically. Then smile and go about your day, continuing to enjoy your music or the beauty of nature.
In this situation you have just had an interaction with a person, who is carrying a lot of negative energy. Stress, anger, frustration, bitterness, disease, anxiety, and so on.
People can be like garbage trucks, all of these negative emotions and energies are like garbage. If we do not have proper self care routines to dump your garbage in an eco-friendly way; then that garbage just piles up in our bodies. When the garbage is piled up, we tend to dump it whenever and wherever we can…usually unknowingly and unaware of the effect that it has on other people.
In just that short interaction, you might have gotten some garbage on you that has the potential to ruin your whole day. Once you pick up a little, and you start thinking about how awful that interaction was…you draw more garbage to you. Pretty soon your garbage truck is full and you are spilling your garbage on anyone who gets near you.
This is an incredibly unhealthy cycle, and just the simple act of bringing awareness to it in your life, can have a positive effect.
If you go back up to that initial situation and question about how you are likely to respond AFTER reading about this theory, you might be more likely to pick C. And picture a trash can in between you and that person and let the garbage
go into that neutral zone instead of getting stuck to you.
But today, I want to talk about recognizing when other people are walking around with too much garbage. When you are aware of other people’s garbage, you can protect yourself from getting any stuck on you and you can de-escalate situations with them, rather than responding in a negative way…perpetuating the garbage issue and passing it along to others.
You might notice that some people in your life are carrying around more garbage than others. You will recognize this by their short tempers, anger, bitterness, frustration, and negative presence.
When you notice this about people, your awareness can make it easier to control your reaction to their garbage. I am not going to lie…I have been aware of and living by this theory for many years, and I still react sometimes without thinking when I am met with a person who has a full garbage truck. That being said, the more awareness you have of the situation the easier it is to take a step back and let their garbage go into an invisible trash can in between the two of you instead of letting it hit you.
