“The Dog” Journal
Welcome to the Dog Journal, a blog where I periodically share my best finds for taming those puppies that gnaw at your planner.
Could be a quick time management tip, a smell-the-flowers moment, a comment overheard on the elevator. Whatever the inspiration, I hope you’ll blog right along with me by commenting and sharing your tips and stories for taming an overbooked life.
Float Like A Leaf….
A favorite piece of advice I once received after leaving a hyper-hectic job was “Float like a leaf down a river.”
The metaphor was perfect. There are times when the best we can do is relax into the flow, like a leaf down a river, and just allow ourselves to be carried.
I was reminded of the advice during a Sunday afternoon canoe trip down the Hocking River, where the afternoon sun and falling leaves conspired to make a magical afternoon. Like the paddlers who passed them by, some of the leaves were willing to be carried limply by the water. Others scooted energetically like crumpled brown sailboats, fueled by a fresh breeze.
There’s no right or wrong way to move down a river. Monday comes soon enough either way. But my salute goes to the floaters. They took the afternoon off and breathed deep.
High School Reunions: Don’t Say No
Time travel is exhausting. So I learned this weekend, revisiting high school classmates at our (gulp!) 45th reunion.
Aided by Google and Facebook, the organizers managed to track down and entice more than 60 of the first graduating class of Firestone High School in Akron, Ohio, to return for the latest of our now-and-again gatherings.
With yearbook photos and the women’s maiden names on the nametags, we squinted, then feigned instant recognition of brunettes who had long ago gone gray or blond. And over two days, we traded stories.
Some, healthy and accompanied by their original mates and sheafs of grandchild pictures, seemed to have led fairytale lives. Others recounted couplings and un-couplings worthy of a soap opera, chronic illnesses, and deaths even of children. Wisdom seemed to flow from these stories in direct proportion to the losses that drove them.
High school can be a painful time, and many resist revisiting it when the reunion notice arrives. But reconnecting with real people and their stories can be a broadening and perspective-altering experience. Never mind that you weren’t a cheerleader or the captain of the football team. It really doesn’t matter anymore.
The Power of Failure
When the same message comes at me from several directions, I figure it’s time to pay attention.
The bombardment started with a sticker we were required to wear at a coaches’ training class. It wore a single four-letter word: FAIL. Not only were we told it was OK to fail. We were encouraged to fail and learn from it. Never failing meant never getting outside our comfort zones, never taking a chance on intuition. For each failure, we were rewarded with a chicken scratch on the sticker. I got a few.
Round 2 came in a sermon, in which the pastor suggested erasers might be a good symbol to keep around. Without failure, he said, there was no learning. The eraser meant we could keep going and trying, learning from our mistakes.
The final round came via my current book of choice: Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman, PhD. In it, the author acknowledges that failure causes all of us to become “momentarily helpless,” but that in optimists the helplessness does not persist. Another good reason to view failure as an opportunity to learn.
If wisdom comes in 3’s, the message is clear. If the dog eats your planner and it feels like a failure, one question to ask is “Yeah, but what did I learn from it?”
What have you failed at recently? What did you learn from it?
Life Balance Like Sailing
I had the grand opportunity to help “crew” a sailboat on Lake Erie this week. In sailboating, I soon learned, there is no such thing as just going along for the ride. What makes it fun is that every passenger soon gets an assignment, whether it’s as elementary as swabbing the decks or as advanced as hoisting the sail.
A newcomer to sailing, I was definitely in the “swabbing” category. Mopping requires no particular knowledge of sailing terminology. Starboard or port, a deck is a deck. A sail, however, is not just a sail. It is a main sail, mast, jib or boom.
The voyage – which happily took us from harbor to lake and back to harbor without mishap – reminded me of a few principles of life balance that are worth noting:
If you’re off course, even a small adjustment of the sail can make a huge difference.
If you’re “dead in the water,” it’s handy to have a back-up motor of reserve energy that can move you to a better place.
And – very important – You can’t do it all yourself.
Here’s to smoother sailing!
