DID I DO THAT?!!!

Yeah, you missed it.

Dropped the ball.

 Blew it.

Messed up.

Oh Crap! Yeah, all that!

Have you been there?   What makes it worse is this isn’t the first time it’s happened!  Most folks are able to give themselves some grace when it’s a first time occurrence.  Oh well, you live, you learn, you go on. You tell yourself, “I won’t do that again!”  

Until it happens… again.

I got to work this morning with a song on my heart and pep in my step. You know how it is. I was in my zone and life was feeling pretty good until I turned on my computer and opened my inbox. Oh Lord!  I’d forgotten that I was supposed to make a call at 8:30 to a high ranking corporate officer in my company. He’d sent an email stating:

“I was expecting your call this morning. It’s now 8:50am and I have to leave for a meeting.”  

Whoosh!  All the air went out of my balloon. How could I have forgotten that call! I shook my head and stared at the screen in dismay. Man! I had dropped the ball… again.  Oh yeah, I wish I could say this was the first time, but it wasn’t. Just a few weeks ago, I had a call scheduled with my boss and I missed that one too. He called me later and asked what happened.

What happened is a great question!

It’s not really about the extenuating circumstances that were going on  that led to me missing both of these calls.

 It was the fact I failed to set myself up to make the call!

Something as simple as setting a reminder on my phone and/or computer would have prompted me to make those calls in spite of whatever was going on at the moment. Even if the call was to let the other person know that something had come up and we’d have to reschedule. Funny how we always see things so clearly in hindsight. But hindsight doesn’t take away consequences. You pretty much have to suck up to those but at the end of the day what lesson have you learned?  What are you going to do differently?  We’ve all heard the old saying, “If you always do what you always did you’re always going to get what you always got!”   If you’re tired of reaping the same results, you’ve got to sow or do something different. You will not get different results doing the same old, same old.

I think that’s called insanity?

Ok, so I did what I could to repair the damage. I sent an email profusely apologizing. But then I recognized I needed to something to avoid this happening again. Reminding myself of the importance of the task and the “why” behind it would have created a sense of urgency. And that urgency would have caused me to set the reminder so I wouldn’t forget. Maybe you don’t have to do all that. But if you find yourself repeatedly dropping the ball in any particular area of your life then you have to have an honest conversation with yourself to find out why. Whatever you’re reality check turns out to be, pay attention to it and make a decision to do something about it.

It’s your choice.

I choose not to make this mistake again.