Slow Down Or Get Run Down

My dad likes it when I include a personal story to illustrate a point, and boy, do I have a good one for today. My personality type lives at the 20,000 foot level. This means that I like to interact with concepts and ideas more so than data and detail. It’s a blessing and a curse. 

Leaving out the boring details (yes, I’m aware of the irony), when you decide to make a change to the system and platforms used when transacting money, read all the fine print. In my eagerness to execute the change, I ended up losing 2.9% of a transaction due to a fee associated with the way in which I processed the transaction. Thankfully, after speaking with three representatives of the financial platform and explaining my sheer ignorance, the fee was reversed. Lesson learned. Slow Down!  

Ironically, this is not a new concept in my life. Recently, I began journaling using my left hand (I’m a righty) in an effort to force myself to slow down. Why? Because I noticed that my thoughts are always two words ahead of my hand and I often misspell words by jumping a few letters ahead or even combining two words together. Using my left hand forces me to think as I’m writing e-a-c-h l-e-t-t-e-r. 

Perhaps these two stories resonate with you. Where in your life do you need to slow down? To temper your eagerness with more earnestness. Your busyness (interesting work) with getting down to business (important work). There is nothing wrong with making mistakes. I learned something valuable today. That being said, self-inflicted wounds tend to be the worse kind and if misperceived (by you), can send you on a downward spiral of self-inflicted lack of confidence. 

To experience moving forward, take a few minutes and write out a couple areas of your life where you need to slow down in an effort to reduce silly, easily avoidable mistakes. You’ve got to slow down or you’ll be run down before you know it.