Tag: coping

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

Today’s tip is to write down your most important goals for this month.

A little late, 8 days, but still time to do this. I am not a huge an of this, but as I think about this month, which is busy for me, what do I want to accomplish?

• Presentations done and recorded for the PASS Summit
• Finalize planning for the Nov Denver SUG meeting and start to promote it.
• Winter prep around the ranch, a little vehicle maintenance, markers on the driveway, and gas drained/stabilized from a few tools for the winter
• Work hard to enjoy time with family on a vacation trip. Engage and deal with the extra social time and time zone changes.
• Book extra time for my team to practice volleyball during the month.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

Today’s tip is to remember that you are enough, just as you are.

I can be better, but my wife tells me how she appreciates me. My kids will let me know as well. At times, I hear this at work or from attendees at events. The girls I coach always ask me to repeat a year with them.

I’m successful and I appreciate all those comments. I do strive to be better, to not only gain wisdom with age, but learn to apply it. However, I also know that being who I am is enough, even if I never get better.

I think about accepting myself more and more as I can see retirement. I’m still driven, but I’m less concerned about it.

I continue to seek peace daily.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

Today’s tip is to write down three things you appreciate about yourself today.

• I am have learned to be a good partner, and continue to do so
• I work hard to get things done in my life
• I have been able to make positive impacts to others’ lives

My wife has taught me a lot about being a good partner, and with some fits and starts, I think I’ve learned to be better. That’s critical to me because she’s really the only person in my life that I get to choose and stay with.

I am effective in life, in taking care of my health, in being successful at work, in helping run this ranch, and in coaching kids. I appreciate that I can get those things done.

I also really value the kind notes from people that have been helped by SQLServerCentral, or SQL Saturday, or one of my talks, or because I coached or mentored them.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

Today’s tip is to accept your mistakes as a way of helping you make progress.

We all make mistakes. I coach kids, I work with less experienced people, and I have kids. In all cases, mistakes are what help us learn. I can tell you lots about how to do things, but some of the attempts you make to build something result in mistakes. The key is to learn from them.

We always tell programmers to try things. It’s frustrating to have sites like mine (SQLServerCentral), Stack Overflow, etc. that allow people to get code without testing or learning. Lots of people do still test and experiment, but it seems many also just want code they can cut/paste.

Enough of a soapbox. For me, I’ve forgotten to tackle tasks, or done them poorly. I write typos and mistakes and they get published regularly. I’d like to think not too often, but they happen.

When they do, I have learned to stop and not chastise myself or feel I’ve failed. Instead, I try to identify why something went wrong and then think about it how I might change that in the future. A couple examples.

I had a busy weekend, with my son coming home for a few days. Schedules misaligned, and we ended up not being able to get together for a family celebration until Monday night. We weren’t out too late, but the busy, long weekend, a hard day at the gym Monday and then the night had me tired. I had a horrible night’s sleep and ended up missing a meeting in the am. Partly I overslept, and I mis-read the time, so dragging myself to an 8:00am meeting at 7:59am felt fine. The problem was the meeting started at 7:30am, and I had another one at 8.

I apologized, but I also went back and thought about what went wrong. Really, I should have double checked the time. I might have still missed it, but I could have been better prepared. It happens, and I can move on.

A second example had me telling my wife that I would stop at the store for something. I forgot and came home. Home is 12 miles from the store, and a 20minute drive both ways. I got home, realized, and turned around to go back. A waste of time, money, gas, etc. because I didn’t add an item to a list. Rather than complain, or try to get out of going back, or anything else, I worked to correct the mistake right then.

It’s an honest mistake, but one I need to own and be more careful about how I manage supplies when living in the country. No reason to get upset, just learn and move on.