Don’t just concoct your plan.
Hi There,
When’s the last time you laughed at yourself? It’s no joke! There are positive reasons to find occasions to laugh at yourself starting TODAY! It turns out that self-directed laughter is good for your health.
You read correctly. Not only does this flavor of humor have long- and short-term health benefits, but it’s a palatable approach to extracting lessons from your human errors that may be otherwise hard to swallow.
Boy, did I get the opportunity to have a good laugh at myself on Wednesday, when I attended a family reunion!
The irony of the incident makes it doubly funny. You see, over the summer I wrote about my family’s tendency to arrive early. While most of the time punctuality is considered an asset, anything in abundance can be considered unhealthy. And sometimes our family propensity can be excessive— embarrassingly so, catching the host off-guard.
Well, last Wednesday I inadvertently arrived at the reunion about 75 minutes early! And it was all because I made an assumption about the cadence of the gathering. In hindsight, I realize it would have been smart to ask a couple of questions for clarity and share my intentions. But at the time, I didn’t find a reason to second guess my instincts.
For a bit of context, my cousin David said he would be firing up the grill at 4pm. This brought my mind’s eye back, fondly, to multiple gatherings where we congregated in the early afternoon but didn’t eat until late afternoon. So, of course, I assumed this year’s reunion would follow suit.
I picked up my cousin Sharon and headed straight to the venue. But when we arrived at 2:45pm, I became confused. Where were all the other cars? Why did the house seem so quiet? I soon discovered that some folks had planned an early arrival, went for lunch, checked into their hotel, and were directed to reconvene at David’s at 4pm.
When I learned the embarrassing error of my ways, the belly laugh at myself ensued. Firstly, because I’d literally just outed my family about our “addiction to early” and had positioned myself as having conquered that compulsion. Secondly, my huge gaff was a mere hiccup in my family history. It won’t even qualify for a retelling as lore of the Goldsteins’ extreme tendency.
The lesson: An opportunity to apply the growth mindset is to not just concoct a plan, but to share it!
Has anything like this happened to you because of assumptions made?
Cheers!
-Deborah
Deborah Goldstein
DRIVEN Professionals / Forbes / Linkedin
info@drivenpros.com | LinkedIn
DRIVEN Professionals, 35 Adrienne Lane, Garrison, NY 10524