Mini-Failures - when you're wrong or did something wrong, the Micro Edition

In a family, failure is abound. It going be on a big scale, of course, but most practically, it exists on a micro-scale.

To a toddler, maybe you failed by pouring the cereal incorrectly (yes, there is such a thing). Maybe to a 3-year-old, you light the birthday cake too soon (yes, there is such a thing). Maybe to your middle-schooler, your screen time protections backfired (yes, there is such a thing). Maybe you ordered the wrong meal, or item, and brought your family a version less, or different, than they expected.

The fact is that these circumstances have a way of accumulating throughout the day... and with those failures, so does our reaction to those events. Are we throwing pity parties? Or are we owning it and moving forward?

That responsive, reactive energy has a lot to do with our mental state going into the next micro battle. The thing is ... it doesn't always have to be fixed right away. A delay isn't a bad thing. Either new problems emerge or solutions to old problems present themselves. Stated differently - life happens and things change. But more importantly, the fact that the world spins doesn't mean that we ignore problems. It's just that we don't have to bring an urgency to these problems. Let the problem just be a problem. You're not ignoring it - you're giving it space to exist, room for you to be comfortable with it, and an opportunity for a better solution to emerge. Not so terrible?

When you create something bigger, your failures are given context

The first chunk of my life was dictated for me. I went to school and I was told what to do in school. I got a job and I was told what to do at that job. I went to college and I was told what to do in college. I found a better job and I was told to do in that job. My success in those different contexts was some milestone, goal, or achievement that was given to me by those different contexts. I didn't have to think about what the goal was - it was merely given to me. In some sense, that's great - I appreciate that someone was training me. But the problem is that no one told me that I was merely being trained. Without necessary communication and context, I kept drifting through the days thinking another goal or milestone would magically appear. Well, it didn't. And it took me a few years to figure this out - more than I'd like. What did I learn in the process? That you must set those goals for yourself - even if those ...

My body failed - what's next? How to fix it.

My body is f*cked. What's the best way to proceed? Well, that's a tad complicated to answer - we're all snowflakes (translation: no, it's not that you're soft, but you are uniquely injured ). There aren't many worse feelings than knowing you are forever physically limited. And if you fit into that category: I am sorry. But here's the key: you cannot, and should not, feel sorry for yourself. It beats the alternative (you know, not having a living, breathing body with flowing, pumping blood). In this vein (pun intended), our goal is to use what we have. It's to work with the hand we have been dealt. It is to not stop at the first sign of danger - it is to see the danger, acknowledge it, and then move the fuck on. You are not on this earth to sit still. You are not on this earth to waste away. You are not on this earth to do anything other than to inch closer to your potential. And so yes, there have been moments where...

The More Good Days than Bad Days Principle

There are seven days in a week, about 30 days in a month, and 365 days in a year. Not all of those can be good days. No one has 7 perfectly good days. Likewise, I've never gone through an entire year without a single bad day. I have two reactions to that: The first reaction is the whole "control what you can control" thing. You can control your effort and your attitude. And that's absolutely true. But sometimes a day is so bad that no amount of effort or attitude will fix it. The second reaction is that, in any given week, if you have 4 good days and 3 bad days, you're still winning. Even if you have a few "meh" days, but the good ones are still outnumbering the rough ones, I think we're in a good place. The same goes for our practices with our little leaguers. We've had some truly rough and awful practices. The coach's didn't show up with patience, the kids didn't show up with their attention spans, a...

inthedougout

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