Projecting Positivity

My mom used to have this DIVA group  a few years back that would meet monthly and talk over topics and do projects as you can call it. Oh and of course EAT! J My mom had this great idea for an assignment for us. I use the word great in the most sarcastic fashion possible. The way the assignment was presented was ways to get our men/husbands to change their horrible ways. Of course we were all down with that, because we all had some things that annoyed the snot out of us about our mates. We had no idea we were being tricked and bamboozled. The first assignment was for us to tell our mates that we love them and appreciate them choosing us to be the women in their lives. Then the next thing was to not say a negative word to or about our mates to anyone else for thirty days. Last we had to do something or say something nice every day for a week specifically for or with our spouse. Ok…now I know you all don’t know all of my friends and the women that were in the group but I must say this scared the snot out of our mates. Almost every single one, with the exception of the newlyweds in the group and my mom, mates asked what was wrong? Mine asked was I dying or something? My mom pointed out that it was an absolute SHAME that our mates thought something was wrong because we were being nice to them. I have to admit I was shocked at how surprised mine was that I was being so nice. I felt kind of bad…..not much but kind of. We even had one woman say she can’t be nice that long to her husband because he purposely agitates her. She didn’t make it through the thirty days of Project Love.  LOL We were a mess. By the end of this experiment we all realized that this  had nothing to do with changing our mates….but changing ourselves!!! Go figure. After the initial shock our mates did indeed start to respond differently to us but above all things our actions and responses changed.  Could it be that we may have been a big part of the issue all along? Isnt that the way life is a lot of the time? We go through blaming others for how we react to them, or for our lack of happiness. We often speak of how someone MADE us behave that way. The real deal is that we control how we act and that is it. We can’t change anyone else or how they act but we indeed can change how we behave and react to others. Although this project was a real pain and sheer trickery on my mom’s part it taught me how positive actions often get a positive response.