Goals and adjustments

I hope you are well and if you are not, please reach out to me or anyone with whom you feel safe.  This is a difficult time in the world, things happening that I've not seen in my lifetime.  It is easy to be hard on ourselves and from what I know, to hold ourselves to a higher standard than we do just about anyone else.  What does that mean?  We give others a break for their mistakes or letting us down, but we don't show the same grace to our own selves.  I am working on this every day, because we are all simply humans, doing our best with our time on this Earth.  Unless you knowingly hurt others and plan that in your daily activities, you need to give yourself grace.  Humans make mistakes, a lot of them. 
Mistakes are part of life and learning.  I always encouraged my students to try even if they make a mistake because that is what school is for, you see children develop this habit of perfectionism EARLY in life.  It's concerning and I think as adults it's important to share our mistakes and the lessons that we learn from them.  To model appropriate and healthy reactions.  This is what I did as a teacher.  I wasn't proud of my mistakes, maybe beccause I was one of those perfectionist types, but I wanted to show my students how to deal with them in a healthy way.  I was not shown that as a child and it took me over 30 years to learn to live with mistakes and not beat myself up.  So I share that message here.  Give yourself a break.  When possible, laugh at your mistakes or yourself.  No one is perfect, no one.  Then, do what needs to be done to fix it and learn from it.  Another thing I do when considering doing something I haven't tried before or something which I'm not sure of the approach, is to consider the worst case scenario.  What is the worst that can happen?  If I can live with the worst possible outcome, I continue.  
I did this with my dryer, just yesterday.  It started making noise and after some research, it seemed that the rollers were bad.  I looked up a video on how to fix this and I ordered original manufactured parts.  I followed the directions on the video, ran into a road block, got frustrated and then dug deeper into videos for my exact model, figured out where I went wrong and got back to it.  After a few hours of blood (yep), sweat and tears, it was finished!  It works and all seems fine, but if it's not, I now feel confident getting back in there and solving it.  I would never have done this 20 years ago.  I would have had to hire someone or buy a new dryer.  I did consider this as my dryer is 14 years old, but for $40 in parts and a few hours, it was definitenly worth the try!  I am proud of myself.  How often do you allow yourself to feel proud of what you have done?  I'm giving you permission.  Throw your arms up in victory, give your friend a high five and say to yourself, good job, you did it!  I like to throw a little party dance in there as well because that makes me smile.  Do something that makes you smile! 
My goal for this blog was to post two times a week, but I haven't met that goal yet, so I am adjusting.  I will post once a week with an occasional extra post here and there as things come up.  
Until next time, be kind to yourself and others.  The world  needs more kindness.  
Mindy