Thursday; April 29

The other day I was going through my online banking activity and realized something rather startling – instead of deducting my remaining tax bill once, the IRS had withdrawn the amount twice. I never got an email alerting me to the second withdrawal, it just happened. You can imagine my surprise at this level of double-dipping. Had this happened at other times in our lives, this would have been a devastating blow because we would have not only been overdrawn, we would have been WAY overdrawn, but we were financially in a position to be able to withstand the mistake. Now, the point to my story is not how awful the IRS treated me, rather it is to say that I had to make a choice. I could either be upset at what had happened or I could be thankful that we had been blessed to be able to absorb the financial loss. I could either call the IRS (and be put on hold for a half hour), then rant and rave about the incompetence that led to this mistake or could calmly wait my turn to call attention to mistake and figure out how we could make it work.
When unexpected things happen to us, we have options – we can get upset and spew our frustration out on people or we can purposefully work to solve the problem with the least amount of theatrics as possible. I believe that most of us know this, we just need to be reminded that the choice lays with us. What is our go-to approach: caustic or calm?

Think About It!

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