A while ago, one of my coaches asked me how I was when I made mistakes. The question floored me. I hadn’t thought about it because I prided myself on not making mistakes. If I did make a mistake I was pretty hard on myself, especially if I should have known better. I’ve talked about the unreasonable expectations behind a should before, so I won’t go into it here. Now we have started building our new house, I’ve quickly learned things will go wrong. These days I’m ready.
The Story of the Log
A large cherry tree used to reside just outside our lot next to the street. It was a pretty ugly tree. Its limbs had been pared back from overhead power cables, and a large limb had partially fallen in a storm. It was a mess and needed to be removed. It also had a large trunk, 20 inches in diameter which is a lot of wood to dispose of. Fortunately, cherry is sought after for woodworking and a friend of mine was keen to take it away. Problem solved.
The arborists cut the tree and left the large trunk outside our site. I warned my friend it was big and he went off to find a trailer. Getting it onto the trailer was going to be a challenge but we would figure it out. Later that day, I mentioned the log to our contractor who was at the site. He went to have a look at it but couldn’t find it. The log was gone. Did someone take it and if so how?
Then it dawned on us what happened. The excavators had been at the site clearing tree debris, saw the log and decided to do us a favor. They loaded it onto a truck and took it off to the natural waste disposal site. My friend wasn’t happy.
Acceptance
I was sorry but I also had to laugh at the situation. It wasn’t a major issue and who could have guessed this sequence of events would happen. Yes, I could have put a sign on the log saying please don’t take it away. It sounds comical for something that seemed unmovable. Sometimes we just have to accept that things will go wrong. Mistakes are inevitable, how we react is more important.
If you are beating yourself up about a mistake you’ve made, perhaps it’s time to give yourself a pass. Things will go wrong from time to time. 🙂