Tag: coping

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag. 

Today’s tip is to do something to make life easier for someone else.

I do this all the time for family, but that’s easy. It’s a little harder to go out of your way for someone else.

I did have the chance to do this recently. I often wind up at a home store, for various reasons. Partly because I have lots of projects, partly because I forget to get everything I need for some projects.

As I was parking, I saw someone with a big load on a cart coming out to their car. I happened to park near them, and saw them starting to load up some bulky items. I asked if I could help, and spent a few minutes working with them to load some large sheets of plywood and some bulky boxes.

Not hard, and not even much of a difference for this random person. They would have been able to load things fine, but I made life a little easier.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag. 

Today’s tip is to send someone a gift, big or small.

I did this recently. It wasn’t big, but it was medium sized, a little over US$100.

I was online chatting with a friend. They mentioned something about an item they’d like to get, but hadn’t wanted to purchase. It was one of those, “it’s on my life, one day I’ll get one” items.

I knew this person had a birthday coming up, so I contacted their spouse, got their address, and ordered them the item. It felt good, a random act of kindness that I don’t do enough of, even at smaller scales.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag. 

Today’s tip is to take an action to be kind to nature and care for our planet.

Small things can make a difference. Recently I wrote about, and spent a lot of time, digging out some juniper bushes in the front. As a part of this, I uncovered quite a bit of trash that had gotten blown in and caught over the years. I picked it up.

As I was driving along in our neighborhood, I saw a few bags and random pieces of trash that looked like they’d come out of a can in front of someone’s property, and the trash people hadn’t collected them, so I did.

I’ve made it a habit when I see something wrong that I can easily handle to fix it. Picking up a little trash, having to wash my hands or even dispose of it later is a small thing. I know this often goes into landfills, but I think that’s slightly better than having it spread all around town.

I’ve also gotten into composting, which is a bit of a pain, but I can spend a few minutes here and there trying to make things better.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag. 

Today’s tip is to if someone annoys you, be kind. Imagine how they are feeling.

I was in a meeting recently, and someone was a little annoying to me. In this case, it wasn’t what they did, but rather what they didn’t do, which was be prepared or communicate well. Time is valuable to me, I hate Zoom meetings more than I expected, and I sometimes find myself losing some patience when there aren’t productive presentations or discussions.

I did find patience, and I considered just how the person might have had a bad week. They might be struggling. In fact, in this case, I knew the person had some issues outside of work, so I accepted the less than efficient meeting. Asked questions, was pleasant, and voiced no complaints.

We go through, things worked out, and it wasn’t a big impact to my day. I didn’t let it, and more importantly, I didn’t ruin anyone else’s day.