What would I do differently next time?
Pep rally backspins, a historical look at some of my best "one-time mistakes," and avoiding insanity...
We had our first pep rally in three years earlier this week and our athletic director invited me to help with a small part of it. When he gave me the outline for the activity, several parts just said, “ad lib.”
So, this happened.
Nothing crazy—just a backspin.
I’ve done this hundreds of times before.
But in the last three or four years I don’t think I’ve done this more than a handful of times.
This time it felt like someone took a hammer and hit me right at the base of my spine.
I spent the rest of the day trying to avoid standing up or sitting down.
The pain didn’t take long to begin traveling down my left leg.
Dropping into a backspin at 38 is different from dropping into a backspin at 18.
As I laid on the floor of my office for a few minutes in between meetings, I asked myself this, “what would I do differently next time?”
There’s a few options:
No breakdancing at all (but that’s not fun)
Stretch before (even if breakdancing wasn’t on the script, I could have planned ahead for the possibility)
Maybe add a little breakdancing into my exercise routine as a way to keep some of those muscle groups “ready”
Breakdancing at a pep rally is one of those things that doesn’t exactly happen all the time so this may not really need much additional thought. But there are certain events that happen regularly in our lives that we might not always get right which are definitely worth asking this same question, “what would I do differently next time?”
Why do we ask this question?
“If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re gonna keep getting what you’re getting.”
I’m not sure who said that quote originally, but I heard it hundreds of times from my parents growing up. Einstein typically gets credited for this one—“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
That’s why we ask.
Making mistakes? Totally fine.
Making the same mistake again. That’s generally frowned upon.
The Aldous Archives
Here’s a few one time mistakes I fortunately learned from the first time…
Each year we print a magazine for our community both in Singapore and around the world. The list comes from a database and helps determine the total number of copies we print and the postage costs. Not rocket science.
Unless you make a mistake in running the database query and add an extra 10,000 copies to the final total.
🤦🏻♂️ It was a very expensive one time mistake.
Then there was the time I went to Las Vegas after recently being married…
Without my wife.
I had been to Vegas for breakdancing competitions for years before getting married and when another competition came up just decided to head down with the crew without my wife.
🤦🏻♂️ That was another costly one time mistake.
I feel like I should mention that I’m still employed and happily married.
Most mistakes can be recovered from if we learn from them and lay out a different approach for the next time that scenario comes up.
Try out this question the next time something goes wrong 😬
Check out some of the other popular questions we’ve covered before….
