First Four O'Clock Thursday

This is most interesting ... it is the first Four O'Clock Thursday, an appointment I set with self, to ruminate on the state of affairs: mine, the world's, the neighbor's, maybe just the weather. I stood myself up! Yup! I had another appointment that pre-empted this one.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, let me explain how Four O'Clock Thursdays came to be. I belong a Master Mind Group --- we meet by phone each Tuesday. Somehow the subject of negativity came up. One of our members, a wise man and a leader said something to the effect that we should not dwell on the negative; that is, not to avoid its presence but to simply have little to do with it. His suggestion was that we should set aside an hour or so each week and that that is the hour we should devote to having it out with ourselves, with our negative talk. Allow yourself to be as negative as you want and thrash it all out. With such an appointment, everytime you have a niggling negativity creeping up your spine, just tell yourself that it will have to wait till the appointed hour of the week and then go about your day, secure in the knowldege that you will give this negative thought its due attention. Why not make it four o'clock on a Thursday, he said ... and then when four o'clock Thursday arrives, and you are not in a bad mood, well then you've blown it for the week, and will now have to re-schedule.

We all laughed. What an idea! We talked about that famous book, Tuesdays with Morrie . Well one thing led to another and that is how I decided to start a blog about Four O'Clock Thursday ... but with a difference, its not a bitch session with self, but an hour devoted to mental meandering, and to see where that meandering will take me.

So, today, I stood myself up. As I began to say at the beginning, another appointment pre-empted this one. A business appointment, a rather important one, and so I had to weigh the matter and decided that just as with the first option of a "negative hour" being blown because you felt good... well, so too, this appointment with self will now have to wait till next Thursday.

The appointment? Yes. It was good. It was productive. We sealed the deal. What's good for the bottom line, is also good for self.

Till next Thursday!
Recommended Reading:
Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson