If the weather is decent, Tuesday mornings I go to Sam's Club to get our weekly supplies and then deliver them to the Tea Room. It gives me a chance to get to talk to my staff and get some business done in person before they open. Sam's Club can be an adventure on any day but I try to avoid the shenanigans by going early during 'Business Club' hours when there are mostly businesses and restaurants doing their purchasing. But you never know what awaits you. This morning, every parking spot close to the entrance was taken and the only two that were open had shopping carts occupying the space. This is one of my pet peeves. I took a deep breath and rolled them into the cart parking areas and started my day. When I was done, I found myself at the register behind a customer with a very heavily-loaded cart. We all buy for businesses so this is commonplace but the cash register malfunctioned right then. Again, I have a restaurant so I've been here too. I stay calm and decide to use the time to delete e-mails on my phone. The woman behind me comments on how well I'm taking this. I explained to her that when I come to Sam's, I deliberately come with a purposeful zen-like calm because just about everything there is out of my control and I used to become very stressed until I learned to let it go. We got to talking and she left me with her mantra: Keep actively calm and calmly active. I pass it along to all of you - that is powerful.
