Hi friends, and happy Sunday! A couple of weeks ago, we met our son in the city on his lunch break. He snapped a photo of us walking towards his office building — if you squint, you can see two women in black with cute white sneakers, husbands in white ball caps trailing behind.
This photo reminds me that perspective is a beautiful thing.
The problem? We rarely have it.
Most of the time, life is lived on the ground, in the swell of the rest of the humans trying to navigate obstacles (crowds! challenges! cobblestones!). We can see a short distance ahead, and quite a way behind us.
Because we see the past so easily, it can make us live in regret.
Our inability to see the future can be scary.
And what’s the result of that? We have limited perspective. All of us do. We get it right, and we get it wrong sometimes.
We make mistakes and fail.
We’re all living on the ground, bumping around, doing the best we can with what we can see. So today I want to offer you this: failing doesn’t mean you are a failure.
There’s a difference between “I did something wrong” versus “Something is wrong with me.”
If you’ve tried something and failed, maybe it’s time to think of it like a Math problem: I did something wrong. I made a mistake in the math. I took a shot, apparently I did something wrong — and it didn’t work out.
I didn’t do what needed to be done to get the result I wanted.
Maybe that’s what most mistakes are — just getting it wrong. Like getting the Math wrong. No big deal, right? No need for shame, embarrassment, or beating yourself up. Just try again. That’s very different from making a failure mean there’s something wrong with you.
Perspective is everything.
Next time you’re tempted to criticise or shame yourself for getting it wrong, remember this view from my son’s office window. It’s so very different from my view on the ground. We can’t always get it right, but getting it wrong doesn’t mean we are wrong. It just means our actions didn’t create the result we’d hoped for.
And on we go, into a fresh, new week. What a gift: we woke up this morning, and we get to try again.
Love Catherine x
PS. The fun stuff!
C’mon, a little bit of Shakespeare is good for your heart: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? (My first career was working as an English teacher…I’d teach some Shakespeare right now in my living room if I could! ❤️)
Gmail users — wow, these tips are so useful!
Let me take you back to 1997 with this song.
I’m not a cat person, but this cat-bathroom would solve the mess of the litter box.