Ground Hog Day

Loving & Business (Part 2)

Today in the South, our local resident ground hog, General Beauregard Lee, did not see his shadow whereas his counterpart Punxsutawney Phil did. The legend has it that seeing his shadow predicts six more weeks of winter. What is interesting is that the current Phil is pulled out each February 2 to make his prediction and has seen his shadow 100 of the last 116 times.

General Beauregard Lee has a 94% accuracy rate. Not too amazing for either one considering the geography and the climates they are both located in.

Even though it is a bit of lighthearted fun to go through this ritual, it does bring to mind the movie Ground Hog Day in which the primary character, a meteorologist does the annual show and hates it, probably as much as the ground hogs pulled out of their comfy burrows. He gets stuck in a repeating loop of the day, every day until he finally realizes that the only way to break the cycle is to improve himself.

CLICK HERE to watch the movie trailer.

Perhaps we should use Ground Hog Day each year as a reminder that unless we love what we are doing, we will not be able to break negative cycles or change negative results. We have to not only love our business but also love what we do in our roles. Our attitude, perspective and actions invite others to, in essence, spread the love. It is much easier to want to be with or follow a person with a positive and proactive attitude.

A little self-evaluation and prioritization will help a lot with maintaining a perspective of loving your business, job and or role. Most people experiencing the Ground Hog Day phenomenon are pulled into situations that they do not like or do not want to do and really will start the day off in a rotten way. Kind of like the ground hog that did not ask to be rudely pulled out of hibernation just to see if he would see his shadow. I do not know about you, but none of these ground hog day reports I have seen show a ground hog that looks like it is thrilled with the situation. In fact we see them trying to get away, reacting aggressively to the handler and just trying to return to the burrow. The bottom line is that as long as we allow other people and situations to control our day, it will repeat and we will be stuck in Ground Hog Day.

We all need to start each day putting what we need to accomplish first, with the knowledge that there will be people and circumstances that try to pull us into Ground Hog Day. It is our choice to take control of the situation relative to the priority it deserves. We manage our day or we will be managed through our day.

I plan to celebrate today as another opportunity to realize how much I really love what I do and the business I have chosen.

Happy Ground Hog Day!