From Behind a Rake
Lessons can be learned anywhere
Fall has made its presence known, most notably by the carpet of leaves on our lawn. Hours spent raking, raking, raking, trying to catch as many leaves as possible before they dance their way on the wind to the neighbors’ yards.
Sometimes I welcome these times of necessary physical labor. It’s a good thing to be out in the fresh, crisp, cool air, working muscles that haven’t worked this way in a while, hearing the scraping of the rake and crunching of the leaves.
Time to think
As I was raking, I thought about how I was living out a valuable lesson:
Perfection in life may not be possible at the first pass.
I’m not talking about studying really hard and getting a perfect score on an important test, a required certification, or the bar exam. I’m talking about life, where we are putting into practice all the things that we were supposed to be prepared for by school.
Raking all the leaves in a single session would only be possible if we waited for every single leaf from every single tree on our property and in our vicinity to fall. Only then would we be able to rake all the leaves at one time. So we do the next best thing: we rake in stages.
3 attitudes
I could have ended this raking process in one of three ways.
I could have:
- looked back at the newly fallen leaves dotting the area I had just cleared and felt discouraged
- stared up at the tree with all its yet-to-fall, yet-to-be-raked leaves and been completely demoralized
- enjoyed the greenness of the areas I had cleared and rested in the moment.
Yes, that’s right, I chose 3. And it was the right decision, because my decision to remain lighthearted in the face of a big job that wasn’t particularly interesting kept the entire process cheerful.
The evidence for this was my laughing children, turning cartwheels on the lawn.
Do this everywhere
We can manage our families and run our businesses in the same way. In the face of any task, we can choose to:
- look at all the minute details that we could continue to refine, become discouraged, and let perfection hold us back
- stare at the final goal and all the work to be done up until that point, drain our energy, and become mentally paralyzed about what to do next
- pause for a few moments and enjoy our accomplishments to date, gathering our energy for the next steps.
