Pondering Thoughts

Pondering Thoughts

Whenever I get to a stressed level in my life - you know, when you have a permanent frown inside even though you may appear alright to the world... Well, when that happens, I find myself recalling some of the best advice gleaned from a lifetime of encounters with people who knew better than I (which is a lot - ha ha) and I wanted to share some of those bits of advice in this mini-series of posts I'm calling Pondering Thoughts.

So the first was "Start How You Mean To Continue", and today we'll look at:

"Doing it right the first time"

This little bit of advice was somehow ground into me during my youth and eventually took hold. My mother applied this principle to everything we were supposed to do - folding laundry, making the bed, putting away things, doing dishes and other areas of life too.

I recall doing the dishes and we didn't do them right... kinda lazy job. My mom was very disappointed and to show it, we had to do every single dish in every single cupboard. Yeah, a bit strict by today's standards - and she was a very strict mom in some ways, she got the lesson in there alright. You think we didn't do the dishes properly after that? Darn tootin' we did! (ha ha)

This advice led all us kids to have a very strong work ethic. yet, it went deeper than this for me. I got to thinking that there are all kinds of things we set aside for later. Oh I'll take that box to the mail one day... and that "one day" becomes a year later and you still haven't done it. It is far better to just do it and then you aren't stressed and beating yourself up mentally thinking "darn it I haven't done that yet." You aren't moving it aside to clean or put something else in its place. You aren't cluttering up your space.

I'm the kind of person that unfinished projects really eat at me. You know, if you have to stop building the fence because of finances or weather or something comes up and there it sits unfinished for a year or two. That kind of thing just eats at me. Those undone things can become habitual and before you know it you have yourself feeling totally stressed and thinking you'll never get any of your long list of to-do's done and so instead you collapse exhausted on the couch.

It is a habit that can be broken and a new habit of doing things right the first time can be grown in its place.

...something to ponder...

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