Day 2,814

Growth:

There is an interesting dichotomy to learning from challenges. One one hand we want to remember what we learned from the experience which means also remembering the entirety of the challenge – good and bad. On the other hand we want to have the memory of a goldfish and put the challenge behind us and move on without carrying the baggage of the challenge. How do we accomplish both, remembering what was learned AND forgetting the incident to move on unencumbered?

Remember the LESSON we learned from the experience as opposed to the experience itself. Take time to dissect the situation and extract all the lessons from it. Write the lessons down, commit them to memory, and focus on only that, the lessons for future use. Forgive and forget the experience itself, don’t let the negativity drag down future performance.

Ultimately it comes back to asking ourselves that one ridiculously powerful and transformative question. “What can I learn from this?”

Appreciation:

Funny how much life has changed in the past few decades. When I went to scouting events there was never an issue with not having a cellphone on me. No leaders had cellphones nor direct contact with the outside world when we were camping. If there was an issue we would have to drive to the nearest phone and figure things out that way, something that only happened in rare occasions – like when someone had a sledding accident involving a tree 😮

When Gavin went to Scout camp for his National Youth Leadership Training (NYLT) today there was one very clear rule which was enforced at the check in – NO CELLPHONES! There was to be zero electronics brought by the scouts for this event. The leaders even handed out a card with phone numbers in case we needed to contact our scout to help people, what a difference from back in the day.

I could go off on a tangent about how addicted we are to our modern comforts and electronics, but instead I’m grateful for the positives of this. How awesome that there are still events in which kids are reminded that we don’t really have to stay connected 24/7? I’m grateful for this reminder and greatly appreciate knowing that Gavin will be completely unplugged for the next five days. This will be quite a mental gift for him!

Presence:

This afternoon we had yet another graduation party with our friends from La Crosse and it was AWESOME! So thankful for yet another opportunity for us to pause work and everything else to spend time with each other catching up and shooting the bull. I intentionally left my cellphone in the car so I wouldn’t be tempted to remove myself from the conversation. It felt wonderful to be distraction free and focus only on spending time with my buddies. What a wonderful way to spend part of this afternoon!

Thanks!!!