Will It Matter in a Year?

After a long weekend out of town, I come back to my office Monday morning dreading what my inbox looks like. The exhaustion of travel is still lingering. Long story short, it has been one of those days.

If you are like me, reading an email that says "next time, please handle these tasks differently...", means you should have known to do it correctly the first time. Then it spirals from there. Why didn't I think to do it that way? I'm an idiot. What does my boss think of me now? Is my job in jeopardy? etc. I was raised to have no mistakes and that everything makes an impression of what kind of person you are. There was no thinking outside of the box, its black and white. So if you were trained all of your life with this thinking, your natural instinct is that you did something wrong.

Life is about mistakes. Life is about learning. Life is about growing. If you don't make mistakes, you will never learn for the next time. Life is anything but consistent.

We have to learn to realize that mistakes are perfectly fine. They are the lessons that take us further in life, the steps that prepare us for what is to come later in our journey. A co-worker from my first job out of college gave me advice I still use to this day. I was panicking about a presentation I designed for the boss, worried that I was going to get it back with a million mistakes. My friend said to me, "Will this matter in a year? Will this matter in 5 years?". I said no. He said back,"Then why stress over it? Focus on the bigger things in life. Be confident in your work." Tumbling down a path of all our insecurities is easy. We hear these things in our head with every bit of our attention focused on the put downs in our head. But we have to stop and pull back up for air. If we are focused on everything we do wrong, how will we ever realize all of the things we do right? If we take everything personal and to heart, life will not have the joy that it should.

We are strong enough to take direction and learn from others. Even from an email that seems to hit my anxiety immediately. I have to stop, take a breath, and realize what it is. It's a tip for next time. It doesn't make me a bad person or a failure. It's my boss helping me learn for the next time it comes up. It doesn't make me horrible at my job or put me in jeopardy of losing my job. If it had ruined my morning, it could have lead into ruining my day.

Our journey is about not knowing what the future is to bring, but getting there day by day. I truly believe everything happens for a reason. If we have can the attitude of saying thank you when someone gives us direction, think about how it can change our minds? Think of how it can make us feel? "I appreciate you for letting me know. Thank you for your help." That's all it has to be. We have to train ourselves to have a different mindset. The more we teach ourselves the positives in our life, the negatives will begin to get smaller and smaller. You are strong, confident, and talented in what you do. Don't let you tell yourself otherwise.

-DC