Challenging “default thinking.”

Our beautiful, new quartz countertops were installed last week.  The foreman used a Simple Green solution to clean them off.. again and again and again but he just could not get rid of the streaks.

Concerned, he called the company and they sent out a representative. To our utter surprise, the man pulled out a clean, dry cloth and wiped the entire surface. When he was done, he showed us the cloth and it was green..as in Simple Green. He then wiped the counters with a damp rag and within seconds they were perfect.

“Quartz is non-porous” he explained, “all you need to clean it is a water dampened cloth. If you put Simple Green on there you will be chasing smears forever until you completely remove it.

Gee whiz..how easy was that? Here we were concerned we had permanent stains, but it was nothing more than an easily removed problem of our own creation.

By the time you get to be my age, you’ve developed certain habits and traits that are simply automatic.  Exhibit A- I have a tendency to get bogged down, defeated, fatalistic and overwhelmed when I’m “tested.” The exciting thing I’m realizing is that this bias towards negativity is not etched in stone. Like smears on Quartz, these personal predilections can be wiped away and replaced with new ways of handling life’s big and small challenges.

Sometimes all it takes is a motivating quote, like the one above, to get me to pull out a nice clean cloth, wipe off the old patterns and get busy buffing.