I believe in going with the flow. Often people find themselves stressing when things don’t go their way. If you go with the flow life will unfold itself as it should. If something doesn’t go how you wanted it to don’t get really upset about it, but let it go and don’t worry about it.
Towards the end of the last professional football year I struggled to let things go. The day of the Super Bowl started off great. I was really excited to watch it and I woke up in a really good mood. I had already figured out everything I was going to do while I watched it. I was going to skip lunch, so as to not ruin my appetite, and then go over to a friend’s house and eat and watch it there. However, things didn’t go quite according to my plans. First I got over there and everyone looked like they were getting ready to leave. When I asked a friend why he was putting his jacket on he said that everyone had decided to go watch it at a restaurant. This really bothered me for two reasons. First I didn’t want to have to pay for food, and second I wanted to study for a test I had the next day, and I knew I wouldn’t study at a restaurant. So of course I made a scene, and tried to demand that everyone stay because I wanted to. As we pulled into the restaurant parking lot it was obvious the place was packed. When we walked in the hostess said the wait was going to be an hour for a table. Of course we decided that was too long. In frustration we drove fifteen minutes across town to this other sports bar. When we pulled into this restaurant we were even more confused. There were a total of three cars in the whole parking lot. This right away raised alarm in all of our heads. We wanted a restaurant that was sort of busy so that we knew the food was good, but not too busy like the first restaurant. The entire time we drove to the two restaurants I made a complete fool of myself. I whined and complained the entire time about how the whole day was ruined. After finding the second restaurant also insufficient everyone decided to go back to the kid’s house we’d originally planned to go to. Instead of being grateful and humble that I was getting my way, I bragged about how I’d been right the whole time and how if everyone had just listened to me we could’ve saved all that time.
This experience comes to mind when I think of going with the flow. Even after both attempts at finding a restaurant everyone seemed to be in a good mood. Instead of doing that I made a fool of myself and stressed for nearly an hour on one of my favorite days of the year.