Calibrate Ourselves

Transcript

Calibrate ourselves, get used to our surroundings, acknowledge the process is in fact the process.

Someone told me the other day going to yoga and practicing balance. Of course you do things like the tree pose, putting one foot against the thigh of your other leg to balance on one leg, put your hands out to the side and try to relax trying to focus on one point in the distance and gain balance in a strange position.

When you first learn to this, maybe your balance isn’t the best. Maybe you wobble a little and the instructor says that’s good. You’re learning balance, that means your muscles are figuring out how to do this, how to reach that equilibrium. What a nice little metaphor for life.

Of course in that process you might even stumble and have to put your foot down to regain balance. That happens sometimes. In an extreme case you might even fall over.

And that’s part of the process. Wobbling is part of the process.

What happens in life when we go a bit too far? Maybe we are learning to be confident and as a result we’re a little rude or get overconfident.

I remember, this is an unusual story but many years ago I had been building up my confidence doing door to door sales and one day I nearly got into a fight.

I’m not much of a fighter. What happened is kind of a strange thing. I was trying to have a rap battle with these young men, 16 or 17 year old lads at the train station. I don’t know what happened, each of us put 5 dollars in a hat and one of them ran off with my 5 dollars so I didn’t get the chance to win.

I was so angry and because of this extra confidence I gained from doing door to door sales, I’d been extending myself. Before that I wouldn’t have said anything. I would have felt disappointed and bummed about it but I would have let it go.

But I had this extra confidence and it’s a little more difficult to control myself. A little confident, I nearly got into a fight. I ran across the street threateningly and ended up receiving a punch.

And I was like wait I don’t want to fight you guys, I like you guys!

And managed to settle the situation but a police officer came in that moment and they forgave me. They told me someone else took the money.

I told them I don’t even care about the 5 dollars, forget about it.

The important thing is that we maintain the peace. I shook their hands and didn’t think much about it again.

The problem was of course that I had a calibration issue and went too far and by the grace of god nothing that bad happened. I learned a lesson about control that even though I feel more confident I don’t have the fighting skills to back it up and I don’t want to get into a fight with anyone so I had to learn the lesson.

Here’s the thing in life, we make mistakes. We go too far in our process and that is ok. Of course, yes we might hurt others in the process. We might get hurt in the process but it is part of the process.

If you’ve got those hurts your holding onto and think I shouldn’t have done that, maybe you’re right. But that’s part of the process. You couldn’t have known before hand. We judge ourselves with the wisdom we have today and look back on our past and think I shouldn’t have done that.

We didn’t have the wisdom we do now. We were more or less acting in good faith in that situation. Maybe it turned out it wasn’t, that’s how we learn our lessons. That’s all part of the path.

We can’t avoid walking in the path and stumbling on a few stones now and then if we want to walk the path then that is going to happen.

That is a part of the path, that is a part of us. So we calibrate and we go a little to far or not far enough. Then we learn balance. Calibrate.

Thank you for listening and doing your best to calibrate reflecting on previous experiences and extracting lessons so you can use them to be an even better version of yourself to enjoy the excellent version of yourself today. You’ve come so far, keep going!