I’ve been involved in a bit of a battle with my six year old these past couple of weeks.
Every day he insists that he’s too tired for school and worried.
I remind him that he’s slept all night and ask what he’s worried about, to which he replies that he doesn’t know what he’s worried about.
Yesterday I offered to pretend I was the wizard in the Mr Worry storybook so he could tell me everything that he’s worried about and I could make sure none of it happened.
“But that won’t work. You’re not a wizard!”
He’s right of course, I’m not. But I decided to pretend like I was anyway and asked him two magic words ….
“What if …”
Specifically in his case, what if you weren’t tired and worried about anything?
He didn’t have an answer but for the first time in 2 weeks, he went into school happily. This morning, he didn’t mention being worried at all and he even smiled, waved and blew me kisses. Magic!
It’s Friday. I’m not naive enough to believe that when Monday rolls round, everything will be perfect but a girl can hope eh 😉
After dropping him and his siblings off at school, I started to think about today’s Daily Dose and do you know what I came up with? Nothing!
After messing about on Facebook for a bit, making a cuppa, twitter, all the usual pre-writing things that get me going, a thought popped in my head …
“What if I did know what to write about today?”
And that’s when it struck me … what if ‘what if’ were two magic words that had the potential to unlock all manner of stuckage?
My daughter was fussing because she didn’t know the answer to something. “What if you did know?”
A good friend was unsure about something that she regularly consults on. “What if this was your client? What would you tell them?”
Not to mention all those ‘what ifs’ that came tumbling out in yesterday’s Daily Dose.
‘What if?’ is swiftly becoming my favourite phrase and so today, whatever that thing is that you’re pondering on, I’d encourage you to wave the magic wand of ‘what if’ over it and see what happens.
And just in case you’re inclined toward being a little bit like Mr Worry, this is about opening ourselves to possibilities. I’m not advocating the worry kind of ‘what ifs’:
What if the roof falls down? What if I make the wrong decision and everything collapses as a result? What if I’m wrong? What if I miss something?
Those kinds of ‘what ifs’ keep you stuck and playing small and we are all about moving forward.
Jesus said not to worry about tomorrow and I’m pretty sure that includes every worry based ‘what if’ you can imagine.