Tag: Mistakes

Fumble

American Football on the Field
American Football on the Field with room for copy

No matter who you are, at some point, you will get it wrong.  That is a rather liberating statement.  NFL great Jerry Rice was an unbelievably talented player.  During his career from 1985 to 2004 he scored 197 touchdowns.  In the games I watched him play, he seemed to be able to do no wrong.  Yet, his stats show otherwise.  The same Jerry Rice that scored 197 touchdowns also fumbled the ball nineteen times.  Nobody is perfect.

I am only human.  As such, I inevitably make mistakes.  As a parent, my son is constantly watching me.  He is young enough he wants to be like me.  He will imitate me in the way I do things, talk and interact with others.  When I stop to think about that, it is truly frightening.  I know who I am and I am far from perfect.

There are those little lessons we are given the opportunity to share with our kids that come along when we mess up.  The other day, I was not having a good day.  I wasn’t feeling great; my patience had been worn thin and I was grumpy by that time of the day.  I love my son.  He is probably one of the greatest parts of my life.  Yet as an eight-year-old, he can be an eight-year-old.  I think he was playing after I had asked him to get his shoes on.  He kept on playing and I asked again for him to get his shoes on.  Did a few other things to get ready for the day and when I came back in the living room, you can guess who did not have their shoes on.

Being on the grumpy side I barked at him far in excess of what he did not do.  I caught myself and had to step back.  He hurried and put his shoes on and I could see it hurt him.  My son loves to please.  He has a very tender heart and is caring towards others.  My words, spoke in anger, hurt him.

I immediately stopped what I was doing, went to him and knelt down so I could look him in the eye.  I apologized to him.  I acknowledged that I over reacted and shouldn’t have spoken in anger to him and asked his forgiveness.  I hugged him tightly and told him I love him very much and that I overreacted.

I cannot expect my son to own up to his mistakes if I don’t own up to mine.  He needs to see me take ownership of my mistake and how I handle them as positively as possible.  Everyone makes mistakes.  It is how we deal with our mistakes that builds character.

One of my favorite Bible stories is that of King David.  God called him a “man after his own heart.”  Yet, King David was as capable of making mistakes as anyone.  Heck, he had a man killed so he could take his wife.  What I love about David is how he handled his mistakes.  Throughout Psalms and the books of Samuel, we see David own up to what he did wrong.  He pours his heart out before God.  David doesn’t shift blame or make excuses.  He owns his mistakes.  That is the example I want to set for my son.  To own my mistakes and move forward trying to not repeat them.

How do you handle your mistakes?  Do your children see how you handle them or do you keep it hidden from them?  Who do you look to as an example of what to do when you get it wrong?

You So Poor, You Can’t Even Pay Attention – Keeping Focus on What’s Important

Life is full of distractions.  Often the tools we have that make life easier can become a burden to us and our relationships around us.  For example, the cell phone is a marvelous tool.  With it, I have a calendar that ensures that reminds me of where I need to be and at what time I need to be there.  It keeps me connected with my family in that I can have nearly instant communication with my wife no matter where I am.  I can work from anywhere as I have email on it to communicate with my customers.  It is a powerful tool with more processing power in it than the mainframe computers used to send astronauts to the moon and back.

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Yet, what do we do with this powerful tool?  Engaging in activities which are time sucks.  You know what I am talking about.  Reading that click-bait article you found on Facebook, harvesting your carrots in Farmville, or posting pictures of your dessert on Twitter.  Are any of these activities bad in and of themselves?  No, of course not.  But when they distract us from being aware of those around us, they can harm our relationships, even when we are trying to do something useful for those around us.

Let me give you an example.  My wife asked me if she could use my PayPal Here device during an upcoming garage sale.  No problems, I said yes.  But, the new phone I have does not support the older PayPal Here device I have.  So I ran down the rabbit hole of looking for a solution.  There was an android tablet that could support the older device that I had.  I sat down while my wife and son were eating breakfast and worked on it.  Installing the app, I tested it.  I became so focused on what I was doing I lost track of what was going on around me.  There my family was sitting in near silence eating while they saw me work on a tablet ignoring them.

To make matters worse, my wife asked me a question I did not even register she asked until I stood up to go use the restroom.  I had become so engrossed in what I was doing; I did not hear my wife even though she was just a few feet from me.  Needless to say that was not meeting my wife’s needs.  When I asked what she had said, I got the dreaded “nothing” answer.

How do you recover from falling into the pit you dug for yourself?  Now this was not the first time I had been so engrossed in something I missed out on what was going on around me.  What can I do?  Well, first acknowledge that I was way too engrossed in what I was doing.

Second, own up to not doing it at an appropriate time.  I should have waited until after my wife and son were doing something else.  One of my goals for this year is to be more intentional about family time.  Put up the phone/tablet/laptop/book/new shiny thing of the day and focus on who I am with when they are with me.  Had it been a situation where there was 20 minutes to the start of the garage sale that might have been different provided I told my wife what I was up to.  But there was plenty of time.  It could have waited.

Third, demonstrate that I am trying to learn from my mistakes.  Wanting to change does not make the change happen.  If desire was all it took, life would be pretty easy.  One thing I am looking to do is to have a basket.  When family time occurs (meals, movie night, times when we are just hanging out), I want to put my electronic tools in the basket.  This way my family has a visual I am being intentional about protecting my time with them.  Words can’t have as great a healing effect without an action to show they are at work.  James wrote that faith without works is dead.  So too can our words be dead if we don’t back them up with actions to show we are trying to change the negative behavior.

Fourth, be careful of being defensive.  This is a problem for me.  What I may view as giving a reason for what I did may just be an excuse to the person receiving it.  The best intentions mean nothing if you are not accounting for how the other person receives what you are doing.  It is human nature want to justify our actions.  It is easy to see ourselves as the victim as we were “just trying to…”  What I have found is any time I try to justify my actions, it’s received as negating my wife’s feelings.  That is not my intent.  It is not an easy thing to stop and attempt to evaluate what my wife is feeling when you are “in the moment.”  Human nature wants to win the argument.  But that strategy is doomed to fail and everyone loses.  But when I stop and take the time to evaluate and try to put myself in her shoes, the results turn out better.  Arguments are never easy and always uncomfortable.  But it can mitigate the pain when you try to understand what the other person is feeling.

What is it you do to pay attention to your family?  How do you avoid distraction?  What are your time sucks that pull you away from those who mean the most to you?