When you live in the northeast, snow is a way of life. From roughly December through early April you are truly at the mercy of the weather. On Sunday, we were expecting to get a few inches of snow; depending on when the snow started, we might have ended up with a school delay. Delays, and their more severe friend “snow days” are also something we have to deal with up north; for better or worse.
While there is much to enjoy about the idea of a snow day or delay (beautiful outdoor conditions, a slower start to the workday, etc.) there is also much to be wary about. Black ice can form very easily, making for slick conditions, and there is always the struggle of shoveling snow.
It’s funny. We tend to gravitate more towards one side of the weather (i.e. “Snow days are terrible” or “Snow days are awesome”) and we sometimes forget that there are, in fact, two sides to every coin. Even the best situations have a flip side, and even the worst have a silver lining.
In our professional and personal lives, we need to welcome both the positive and the negative for what they are: often two ways of looking at the same thing, and always an opportunity to be better. One of the best ways to approach these mirror situations? Welcome the fact that there are multiple ways that any scenario can arrive to us, and therefore multiple ways that we can respond.
That, in turn, helps us to see that there are not always right or wrong answers, but instead, decisions that tend to be influenced by how we see things; in other words, the lenses we look through.
Therefore, it makes sense to consider our lenses carefully, clean them often, and remember that the way they look to us, may be very different than how others see through them.
Enjoy your snow day (or not)!