What appears to be a disaster in progress in the picture above, is actually one of the more creative Christmas decorations I have ever come across. It is so realistic, in fact, that the police made the homeowner take it down after only 2 days. “I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever. A 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound laddar and almost killed herself putting it up against the house. She didn’t realize it was a fake until she got up to the top (and was NOT happy).”
So, are you ending 2009 hanging from your gutter, or is your trauma just an illusion. Let’s face it, careers are not cookie cutter predictable. They are more like weather patterns. There are seasons. There are cold fronts and warm fronts. There are periods of draught and relentless rain. The only thing you can be certain about is that the sun will once again shine.
I gave an in studio radio interview this week, and at the end, the host asked me, “Tell me about one of your greatest mistakes.” I briefly mentioned the office Christmas party fiasco of 1995, but then reflected seriously. I think one of the greatest mistakes was that early on, I thought about mistakes, I thought about failure…incorrectly. I believed that success represented flawless progress. I fought against failure, and when it happened, I blamed it as best I could on external factors. My colleagues were brown nosers. My boss was a jerk. Anything I could think of, except that is for the real source of my setback.
I sucked.
Looking back, these failures were marvelous markers, steering me away from the things that I wasn’t passionate about, nor good at, and towards the things that I was. Each of the trauma’s I had faced passed mostly harmlessly with time, and left me stronger, more knowledgeable about the best direction for my future.
We all suck at something. Discovering it early is a gift. And the long term repercussions of failure and struggle are rarely as disastrous as the in-the-moment illusions we craft in our minds.
