It’s Only Hamburgers

A new employee was working the grill at a fast-food restaurant. He had only been on the job a couple of days and of course, was still learning how to prepare the various sandwiches on the menu. He was a good worker and extremely conscientious. He was a good addition to the crew.

As the volume of business began to increase on this particular day, you could see his discomfort also increasing. He was under pressure to work a little faster now while at the same time, making sure the food was prepared exactly as expected. He became more agitated as his work-load increased and his frustration was obvious to anyone around him.

His trainer noticed his increasing discomfort and moved over next to him on the line. The trainer’s advice was simple and right to the point. “Take a deep breath, relax and just do your best. After all, it’s only hamburgers.”

When you get right down to it, a lot of what happens in our lives – the different events and situations that we encounter – is “only hamburgers”. For most of us, the things that happen to us and around us are not nearly as significant nor as important as we make them out to be. Yet we fuss, lose sleep, spazz out and go through episodes of self-doubt while we worry about the outcome of our stressful situation. We develop worse-case scenarios and produce uncomfortable emotions to match our sense of impending doom. We turn ourselves into miserable, stressed-out human beings.

And yes, to be realistic about it, there are times in each of our lives when we need to buckle down, get serious and take action to address a very important personal situation. It’s just the way life is. For the other 80 to 90 percent of the time though, we would probably be better off if we backed off so we could view the situation in a more realistic light, took a deep breath, relaxed and just did our best. After all, it’s only hamburgers…