Heads Held High Above Our Failed Fray

“Then I looked up. And I said, ‘Oh, MAN!’ 
And that’s how Wacky Wednesday began.” 
—Dr. Seuss

Nope, you can't have it all. Not even the daddies. You just can't co-host an Internet radio show and help coach your daughter's little league T-ball game at the same time.

Maybe reading Wacky Wednesday on Tuesday night is what started it all. It wasn’t my worst mistake ever, but it still bothered me – just poor decision-making than anything else based on limited data, guesswork and of course wishful thinking.

Listening to the Reply All podcast episode The Time Traveler and the Hitman on that Thursday morning while I worked out didn’t help me much either. The episode told the story of John Silveira who in 1997 placed a joke classified ad in a tiny publication called Backwoods Home Magazine asking if anyone wanted to travel back in time with him. Surprisingly a lot of people took him seriously wanting him to fix the worst mistakes they’d ever made.

Again, it wasn’t my worst mistake, and I probably wouldn’t have written John Silveira asking for his help, much less even finding his ad in print or online where it eventually ended up. But it got me thinking about the “what if” of going back to undo the poor decision-making process. What if I could?

When you’re co-hosting a live Internet radio show, it’s best to launch it in a quiet, secure environment, one where the Internet connection is sound. Where my guesswork and wishful thinking went wrong was when I decided I could practically do anything from anywhere with my Wi-Fi hotspot and any device.

In this case, launch our show from the near the field where my oldest daughter plays little league T-ball, and where I’m one of the assistant coaches for her team. Unfortunately my Wi-Fi hotspot wasn’t strong enough and I a few minutes before the show started I frantically texted my friend and co-host, Meghan M. Biro, to launch the show.

We pulled that off, but then one our guests had a poor dial-in connection that sounded like we had cement mixers on the show. After he disconnected and dialed back in, we finished strong and then moved on to our Twitter chat portion. But I was already late to the game and caught half-focused online and real-time on the field.

I rolled with it all and adapted as quickly as I could, though, keeping my composure and delivering upbeat no matter what. There’s no other choice for those of us who are aware enough of our own limitations and strengths and where our emotional intelligence affects how we make decisions, mistakes, adjust and ultimately achieve positive results. This of course all validated by analyzing high EQ data on over a million people according to a recent LinkedIn article by Dr. Travis Bradberry.

Sure, time travel could have saved one of two things I had control over, but not both. We can’t have it all no matter how much we think we can – a common myth we perpetuate no matter what the painful reality tells us. I'm sure you all have many more train wreck examples of what goes wrong when you try to have it all.

Longing for time travel doesn't change what happened; it only saps us of the mindful presence needed to keep ourselves moving along, heads held high above our failed fray.

But then again, there was that one time in 1989...