Today we’re going to talk about when bad things happen.
Bad things Happen.
That’s life.
– The car breaks down
– You run into a freight train when you’re already late
– Your kid spills a glass of milk
– Your employee makes a mistake
Now the question is- How much power are you going to give this incident?
Remember the serenity prayer?
Lord Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The Courage to change the things I can,
And the Wisdom to know the difference.
These are the things that you usually cannot change. You have to take them in stride and move on.
Deal with whatever the problem is- feel good that you got through it- and go on with your life.
Don’t give your power away.
If your child spills, clean it up and move on. No big deal.
But when you give it power over you-
You start swearing- belittling your child for be being so stupid and clumsy.
You are distracted by anger, so it takes you longer to clean it up.
You have made your child feel awful, they just want to get away from you.
Now everyone is miserable, and it was just an accident.
Once time, my daughter had a bunch of friends in the living room. I wasn’t in the room, but I could hear what was going on.
They spilled some punch. The other kids wanted to try to hide it as quickly as possible. My daughter quickly said I’m going to go get my mom. The other kids said, no- she’ll get mad. Emma said- she won’t get mad.
I came in with paper towels and a garbage bag and said, Ok, let’s clean this up.
The look of relief on their faces was so overwhelming that I had to wonder what kind of torture they would have gone through at home for this simple accident.
They all pitched in, it was cleaned up in a matter of minutes, and they went back to having fun. A little more carefully this time.
Now, go through that story again, only imagining an employee had made a mistake.
Can you see how the same pattern can be repeated?
You see, most things in life really are no big deal, unless we give them power.
Make “No Big Deal” a part of your vocabulary. If you think you might have difficulty putting things in perspective as far as what’s a big deal and what’s not, here’s the guide my friend John told me he uses:
“When anything happens that I feel is upsetting I always stop a second and think to myself “where does this fall between a pin drop and a nuclear explosion?” I find that most things that happen are closer in seriousness to the pin drop than a nuclear
explosion.”
My friend John is a wise man 🙂 See you tomorrow!
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