This is true and would have been embarrassing if I hadn’t learned something.
I missed the plane.
I am blessed and cursed by high levels of attention and focus. In this instance I was traveling to a client 3 hours away and was waiting to board my flight in the first row by the attendant counter reading a really good book.
I didn’t hear the first call. Not the second one. And did not hear the last call.
Eventually I raised my eyes to see what time it was and it was too late. Way too late.
Now what?
The first thing I did was contact my client and said I had a delay.
Then I made it on site driving like a bat out of … h e l l … in 2.5 hours. I am so grateful that I did not hurt anyone on the road by driving so fast. So happy I did not get a ticket. So glad my car could take the punishment.
There was a point in my driving where I was mentally scolding myself and kept doing it until I realized I was beating up and lashing out at the driver of the car. Me. And I have to mention that any accountability test I have taken shows me off the chart accountable. Yep. A double whammy meanness to self.
But, aren’t we all drivers of our own car? Don’t we all in one way or other benefit from improving or changing our ways?
It was a teaching moment for me. Instead of beating myself up for making a mistake to instead acknowledge it. Perhaps even love the fact that I made it because of what I learned from it.
I don’t know about you, but when I refuse to look at it (whatever it is) or scold myself, it holds on and tends to linger. Perhaps empathy for self is just as important as empathy for others.
Have you had similar awareness?
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TIGERS Success Series is a robust collaborative workforce and high performance team development system. Founded on four years of research and subsequent validation, TIGERS offers group behavior assessment based on six collaborative principles – trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success for groups of eight or more people. Follow up training, coaching, consulting and licensing is available to independent consultants and qualified coaches, project managers and internal HR professionals. A Bend, Oregon based company, contact us here to discover how to become a TIGERS Licensed Manager as Facilitator.
