How to Turn a Negative Into a Positive

I’ve only had something stolen from me a few times in my life, and it’s never a pleasant experience. The last time it happened was in March when someone emptied my gym locker on a Sunday morning.

The thief stole my coat, my hat, my keys, and most importantly, my iPhone 5. I have to sell a lot of vegan belts to make up for that! How this happened, I’m not sure. I see it as one of two scenarios. Either this woman (I assume it was a woman!) broke my lock with tools, or I didn’t close the lock properly. But either way, she stole everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything! She even stole my lock! So there I was, stuck at the gym with no keys, no jacket, and no phone to contact anyone. I had walked to the gym that day, so I was in a bit of a pickle. An employee of the gym helped me search the change rooms in case my jacket happened to be in anther locker or in the garbage.  No luck. With iCloud’s “Find Your Phone” website, I was able to track my phone on a computer that the gym conveniently made available for members to use. It showed my phone was about 2 blocks away from the gym, but couldn’t give me the exact location. So the thief was already gone. Armed with a piece of winter protection which was left behind in the lost & found, I ran home. Luckily, I keep a spare key in my garage, so I could still get in. My first step was to call the police, but they told me there wasn’t anything they could do. I gave the police the phone’s serial and EIEN numbers, but the only way they can do anything is if someone happens to turn it in. Fingers crossed. Next, I wrote a message explaining that the person who stole my phone was a female who lives near the address that I got from the tracking system, and has a gym membership, and offered a reward for it. I went to that street and started knocking on doors and left a copy of my messages in as many mail boxes that I could. I was really pissed off that day. Step 3 – I went to Rogers and grabbed the cheapest phone I could find to tide me over until I could get a new iPhone. I am using it now and compared what I used to have, it totally sucks! Step 4 – I had to change all of the locks in my house, which wasn’t cheap. Still feeling pissed off. Step 5 – Acceptance. It has been a few days now. The anger has passed and I’ve come to realize a few things. I’ve been thinking that maybe I could see some positives in this situation. Here they are… For one, I noticed that I was very dependent on my iPhone. Because I always had access to my email at all times, I noticed that I was constantly checking it. I even had a horrible habit of checking my phone at a stop light while driving! Bad! There really is no need to check email that often, no matter how important the message! I have also come to realize that both men and women are both capable of stealing, not just men. I say this because in my mind I seem to associate that more “men” perform criminal acts than women. I always thought this due to the fact that jail cells are filled mostly with men and the fact that statistically most reported crimes are committed by men. But my thoughts on this have changed. This thief was a female. And since my experience others have shared with me stories of female criminals. I believe these stories have come into my consciousness for a reason. Anyone can be a criminal, but I think there’s more to it than that. People who do these things are not in a state of love. Somehow, they are in pain. Maybe the woman who stole my things was in so much pain that some of that pain simply spilled over into my life. So both she and I are in pain and therefore we are similar in that way. Now I have a decision to make. I could let this pain that was passed onto me perpetuate and act upset to another person. I could descend into a spiral of anger and hatred myself.  I could even choose to steal a phone to get myself back to where I was. Or, I could take a step back and notice that the person who stole my phone was in pain. Or maybe I could have been hit by a car on my way to the gym that day, and ended up in the hospital with a broken back! And I could imagine myself lying there just wishing that I could trade that experience with the experience of being robbed. Compared to a broken back, I’d take that option in heartbeat! Maybe that woman has never had an iPhone before. And my winter jacket was quite nice, I must say.  Maybe she sold it all for money to feed her kids, or just kept them to enjoy herself. The Truth is I will never know. But that’s great because it means that I can make up any story I want about the situation. My default thought when it happened was “what a horrible woman, I hope she suffers for what she did! She is awful and I hate her for doing this to me”! I’m sure many people would think something similar. But why settle for the default thought when really, a thought is a thought and thoughts lead to our reality? A default thought is no more correct than any other thought you choose when you really think about it. One of my favorite quotes by Albert Einstein is “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking”. I do believe our thoughts create our reality. The day the theft took place, I was pissed! But I’ve chosen a new thought. I am going with the other story, which is to believe that she was somehow in pain and that that pain spilled over into my life.  And I choose to believe on that one day, the universe had intended for me to be hit by a car while walking to the gym, which resulted in a broken back. But somehow the universe‘s plan was thwarted by some other power and I was dealt a different hand that day. That hand was the loss of some materialistic things. Now I can genuinely say ‘Thank you! This experience is way better than having a broken back! I am sooooooooooo lucky! I feel much better now.

Yours in health, consciousness, and cool fashion, this is Renia Pruchnicki of Truth! Live Your Truth, and Respect Others’!