I’m tired of the negative taking away from the positive. It seems no matter how many wonderful moments that happen on any given day, the one or two awful ones are the ones that get all the energy and determine whether it’s labeled a good or bad day. From now on, I will try to remember:
We catch more baseballs than we drop or miss.
This is something I tell Nate all the time when he gets discouraged for not making a catch or has a bad play (usually after a series of good plays). We were throwing the baseball one day and his attitude changed when a few popped out of his glove after he thought he made the catch. “I keep missing them,” he slumped. After that, I started counting his catches. “How about that one, buddy? Didn’t miss that one,” I reinforced. I got up to 24 before he missed or dropped one. Why should that one cancel out all the others? No way. Unacceptable.
Running at a slower pace than yesterday is still running.
Man, do I get down when I don’t cover as much distance as I did in a previous 30-minute run. Ridiculous. I’m out there, right? I’m not giving up. I’m running and doing something I never thought I’d do. Pushing myself and succeeding just by doing. The comparing comes from my competitive side. It is a strong spirit to reason with but I try. I feel being competitive with myself is a good thing. It keeps me trying to improve and limits my inclination to settle. When I feel the negativity creeping in, I focus on turning it to a positive (better time), instead of just realizing that just doing it is a positive. That deserves praise too.
Millions of correctly typed keys are greater than a few wrong ones.
I go along each day and do my job the right way. I fulfill requests and meet needs, often giving more than the person asked for. I get a ton of thank you emails and messages of praise. But then, I make a mistake. That’s it. All the days of performing as I should are wiped clean. Now, I beat myself up and essentially start over in the “days without a mistake” tally. Why? If your job is not life or death, like so many are not, this should not be mood-changer. I need to remember all the things I carried out without a typo or missed step. I’m not saying I shouldn’t care about the mistake, I just shouldn’t let it dictate how I feel about my contributions.
There are so many more moments that make us label a good day a bad one. Flat tire. Frustration with another person/work. Burned grilled cheese. Whatever. One moment in the day of many determines how we score the points. When I was staying at home with the kids, I used to speak in percentages when Andrew would ask me how the day was. It helped me keep things in perspective. “80 percent was great. 18 percent was a struggle. Two percent was wine time so that doesn’t count.” Whatever gets us through, trying to remember that we catch more than we drop.
Tags: attitude, Mistakes, negatives, pep talk, perspective, positives
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