The Beamer vs. The Yougo

Do any of you really need a definition for the car above???

If you look up the Yougo on Wikipedia, it says the following: "The rise and fall of the worst car in history."

I know a man, his name is Adam. He is a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist. A Cognitive what??? Basically, he helps people (mainly adolescents) change their behavior. I don't like to call him a therapist because he doesn't do traditional couch therapy. He is not a "rent a friend", as I like to call them. He also has a lot of knowledge in ADHD, Learning Disabilities and so on. He is probably one of the smartest people I know. Many of you who know me well, have heard me reference the Beemer and the Yougo. Adam taught me this. The other day I was thinking about the Beemer and the Yougo and thought I'd share.

The Beemer vs. the Yougo is in reference to an emotional state, or our frame of mind when making decisions. Let's take a step back. Remember, the Yougo is a crappy car. Driving it sucks. It's not comfortable, nor reliable. It's ugly. They usually smell funny. So when we are mentally driving in a Yougo, not only does life sometimes suck, there are bugs on our windshield and the "car" we are driving in, simply sucks, making it hard for us to make good decisions which then only adds to our struggles. Life is hard enough when we are making good choices, but when our behavior adds to the mess on our "windshield", it makes life just that much harder. Who wants to be dealing with a Yougo?? Now, what about the Beemer? When mentally driving in a BMW, life is still hard and there may still be bugs on the windshield, but you are in a freaking beemer! Life is OK! The seats are nice, it drives well, you are comfortable despite the long drive and it doesn't stink. I have to repeat, that life is still hard, there is still crap on our windshield but our choices and behavior are better and so we are able to handle things better. We are happy.

The majority of us mentally go back and forth from our Yougo to our Beemer all the time. And the majority of us beat ourselves up when we are thinking and acting from the Yougo. I've learned that moving to the Beamer takes practice. We will not be perfect at it, just like learning to drive a car when we are 15- Someone sits next to us in the passenger seat and helps us learn. When we make mistakes, they help us to see how to do it differently. So just like actually driving, when we make a mistake, we just need to evaluate what happened and how we will handle it differently next time. Then next time, we can hopefully review how we are going to handle something. However, just once is not enough. I think we have all found that we tend to make the same mistakes and sometimes that can get frustrating. This is where another phrase from Adam, one that frustrates me greatly but could not be more true comes into play; "Get over it."

You messed up. You really wish you would have handled something different. So? Get over it. How will you do it differently next time? How can we be accountable and learn from it? Then move on!! Too many of us dwell on our mistakes or how others have hurt us. Harboring those emotions only do us a lot of damage. Now, getting over it, takes a lot more work than one would think and I have had great frustration at times. But I have found it is sound advice. I have also found that I have been able to forgive, move on and become a better person. So there ya go. I've had such a great experience learning to stay in my beamer! Many of you have followed along with me on my other blog and so this concept is not new to you. But I really love this analogy. So, the lesson here, keep trying to think and choose from the beemer. But more importantly, Get over it!