1. Our team offsite -- my go-karting may have been slow, but I made out at the claw machine.
2. The kid had her THIRD injury on the monkey bars, but it doesn't seem serious
3. I convinced the kid to write a letter to Santa, and all she wanted was Lego and a Christmas tree (she actually had trouble thinking of anything she wanted)
4. Messages from my sibling -- I love hearing from family
5. Canker cover -- awesome ulcer medicine.
Something learned:
I was a perfectionist when I was young. I saw things in black and white, and if I couldn't do something right, I didn't want to do that at all.
Learning to let go has been a lifelong process for me. Being able to accept when things are good enough. Even taking engineering in college was initially a struggle, coming from a math background, dealing with approximation of any sort.
I tend to live by the motto, if I want it done well, I'll just do it myself. If I'm going to let someone else do something, I must stay out of it completely, or risk going crazy when they don't do it my way. Recently, I was stressed, with working full time and running our household and trying to find time for myself on top of everything. My husband suggested that I should "lower my standards." When I related that to a friend, her response was "even if we did that, our standards would never be as low as our husbands'."
That might be true, but even so, I think my husband was right. If the cost of perfect is my quality of life, then I need to let go sometimes. Now if only I can figure out how to teach the kiddo the same lesson.
A hope:
My childhood home is getting sold. It would be nice if I get to see it one last time. Or at least get some cool pictures of it.
We can't all be #1
I think we have to be careful with respect to the kids. One doesn't want to teach them that standards don't matter, either. There is such a thing as "good enough", but there's also a much more common thing of "not good enough".
ReplyDeleteThat's true. The approach to take would definitely depend on the individual situation.
DeleteIn my case, I'm seeing a lot of myself in my daughter, where she would be working hard on a project, make a small mistake, declare everything ruined and want to give up altogether. My problem is in teaching her how to navigate the obstacles to project completion.