What parent hasn’t had to deal with a to-do list a mile long? My wife has always been a go-getter. Undoubtedly, she inspired this mom’s to do list cartoon
As amazing as it may seem, there is a cure for the super busy parent. It takes intentionality and discipline. But it is possible. The big challenge is learning to say no when the world seems to be asking us for the moon… and then some!
Are you afraid to fail? Who loves it? Who wouldn’t like to achieve something perfectly and with zero failures? But that isn’t the way life works. There is a connection between failure and achievement. In fact, I would say you can’t have one without the other.
Nobody has it all figured out at the beginning. No matter how much we plan, it is impossible to account for every possible failure or outcome. C. S. Lewis says it best with this quote.
“Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”
C. S. Lewis
A few years back, I was on a project that involved the edition of a book. This book had great sales and we were going to update the design and illustrations.
As we were planning for the release, I heard a phrase that made me cringe; “Failure is not an option!” As the comment echoed in the room, I thought, “Well then, we are in serious trouble, because that doesn’t allow for any improvement.”
If anything is going to change, failure is always an option. Failure and achievement go hand in hand. Sure, we can plan and strive to avoid obvious mistakes.
Failure is success if we learn from it. But even then, we have to be careful. What didn’t work before could work today, and vice versa.
As we get older, we can be tempted to turn down ideas that didn’t work yesterday but could be wildly successful today. Failure is an option if you want success. We have to face those fears!
Sure, we can choose to do nothing. It is an option if we fear failure. And it is a choice. Staying put is a choice that guarantees no failure, nor success. But it is also is a choice that leads to regret.
It is better to encounter short-term failure because we tried than long-term failure because we were afraid of the possibilities. While doing nothing is an option, I hope you decide to take the risk, learning from failure, and succeeding is far better than wondering if you could have been successful.
I’ve never been much of a horror movie fan. The term good scare sounds like an oxymoron to me. With all the news about pandemics and quarantines these days, I’m in even less of a mood for a good scare.
I’ve had to take some breaks from the news lately. Yet, I’ve also wanted to stay informed. It is possible to do both. Much of the news can be condensed to one half-hour segment. We don’t need to be immersed in all of the updates 24/7.
No time is a good time for a good scare. This isn’t a convenient time. But since we are in a crisis, there are some things you and I can do to balance the bad news.
There are many things we can’t control. But we can control how we start our day and what goes into our minds. Nix the scary stuff first thing in the morning.
The last month has been one rife with fear and dreaded predictions. We don’t really know what the coming weeks will bring, but we do know that unprecedented measures have been taken, and will need to be taken to get this COVID-19 pandemic under control.
While I take this crisis we are in seriously, I also know that fear can make us do irrational things. We can make a problem worse by worrying about it and beginning to hoard things because we don’t trust those around us. We may be tempted to do things that would have shamed us in normal circumstances.
Since I am a person of faith, I choose to give my anxieties to someone who is much bigger than governments and much more powerful than a spiky-looking, viral boogeyman.
I urge you to limit your daily dose of bad news, banish the boogeyman and find some ways to be an encouragement and help to others. We can still do this while practicing social distancing. In the meantime, forget about the armless, two-fanged purple people eater. His bark is worse than his bite.
There are warning signs that are legitimate. As I write this, we are experiencing the beginnings of the Coronavirus/COVID-19 spread in the United States. It would be foolish to ignore the warnings such as those broadcast by the World Health Organization:
At the same time, there can be a lot of misinformation out there. And if you spend enough time on the Internet, you will find warnings that are overly cautious or just plain wrong.
When I drew this cartoon, I thought about how we can get overly cautious. It’s true that pollen can really mess with people. I’ve had hay fever over the years and I am not a fan of the time of year when goldenrod is in full bloom. Still, for most people, it’s not a severe weather event.
There are times when it takes courage to go out there into the world. It remains to be seen if all the conferences that are getting canceled due to COVID-19 are legitimate or overkill. We won’t know the full impact until much later. But in the meantime, we need to keep living and do the activities that make life full.
How are you handling this outbreak and all the warnings? Let us know in the comments.
