Happy Sunday Everyone:
Those that are close to me know this story as I’ve been talking about it the last few weeks, just from.a comical stand point, but I was running on Friday and thought more about it, and figured it was worth sharing after thinking it through.
There is Jack and Thomas, our boys. We love them both the same but they’re very different. Thomas is a piece of work, and I mean that in a great way. Thomas decided he wanted to grow his hair out, we said “sure”. A month into it, without telling anyone, Thomas decides that his sides are too long so he takes my clippers and trims them. Kim comes home and starts laughing, then called me. He basically looked like a 2018 version of Billy Ray Cyrus. I come home from work, and Thomas is there with a big smile on his face, I’m laughing, and the conversation goes like this:
Thomas: “dad what do you think?”
Me: “It looks horrible!”
Thomas: “Honestly Dad, on a percentage basis, how bad is it really?”.
Me: “It’s like 80% freaking terrible”.
Thomas “That means it’s 20% AMAZING”. with the biggest smile on his face imaginable.
Yes he’s as witty as a 12 year old can be, but for me, as a guy who likes to focus on the terrible part of things a bit too much, I just love the optimism in him. He truly meant what he said.
Bigger lesson for me as I digest what could have just been a funny piece of communication between the two of us is the thought and question of what’s on the other side of terrible? Not related to hair, but related to everything we deal with. If we flip terrible on its back, what’s on the other side? I think this week of some really hard conversations I had to have, which you could easily say were terrible, but the outcome of those conversations/communication were in fact, amazing, life changing lessons for me. Not sure we need to use the word “terrible” but the simplicity of flipping challenges, problems, issues, on their backs, the resolution and other side, for me, seems more obvious. Flipping any challenge over gets you off of the challenge and more into the resolution of it, which then allows you to move on. Flip it, resolve it, flush it, and move on.
Have a great Sunday!!