Tag Archives: mistakes

Failing Isn’t Always a Step Backward

I have led a far from perfect life. There are many choices that I would like to take back. Given the chance I would have done things a little differently, but through the struggles I’ve become more refined. I’ve become the woman I wanted to be. Without those mistakes I would not be who I am today. I found strength I never knew I had and I found it because of a failure, a failure that would become my saving grace. I am a young single mother. I fought long and hard to save my marriage, but ultimately it failed … Continue reading →

Learning From Our Mistakes as Pet Owners

Accidents don’t make you a bad pet owner… as long as you learn from them. I was catching up on posts in one of my favorite pet communities and saw a scary story. A young child knocked a lamp off a bedside table, which scared the family dog into making a run for it. When the dog jumped from bed to floor, she landed on the shards of the lamp and ended up severing nerves and tendons in one of her back legs. After emergency surgery, it looks like the dog will be okay. Thank goodness! Do I think this … Continue reading →

Try Not to Overreact at Mistakes and Stumbles

As much as I would sometimes like them to, things do not go perfectly around here. My kids will do really well in some areas and then stumble in others; I will set expectations that are rather unreasonable, and then be disappointed when we fumble. As a single parent, it is a constant battle and lesson for me to remind myself that lessons are learned through mistakes and I need to temper my reactions. For me, I can get wound so tight that I over-react when my kids (or myself) make mistakes and things don’t go as planned. The only … Continue reading →

Sometimes You Just Never Know How Dense Your Spouse Is Until…

…they do something like I did last week. You know how I wrote Friends: You Just Never Know Who You Have in Common? Well, turns out the wife of Wayne’s friend is not my childhood friend after all. I didn’t have her email address, but I had her snail mail address so I sent a letter saying how funny it all was that we knew each other. Wayne had the email address for his guy friend, so he wrote to him that way. On Saturday she used Greg’s email to write and say there is no way I can be … Continue reading →

Short Leash? Or Too Much Rope?

Surely you have heard the old addage that if you give people (kids) enough rope, they will hang themselves with it? I think many of us parents use this advice to keep our children on a very short leash–but is the short leash really the right way to go? Could there be a happy medium between too much and too little? There are a few things that can happen if we try to keep our kids on incredibly short leashes: they can rebel and tug against the rope, causing all sorts of power struggles and resentment; they might also give … Continue reading →

Making Productive Use of Disappointment

Things do not always go our way. Even the most optimistic and successful among us has to face disappointments in our home businesses occasionally. For others of us, the disappointments may seem to come more steadily. Instead of letting ourselves get crushed and discouraged, however, there are productive ways we can make the most of those disappointing times. There are a lot of things we can do with disappointment—we can use it to remind us that we really do care about what is going on in our businesses; we can also take the circumstances that led up to the disappointment … Continue reading →

Some Business Bloopers are Funny

I do not like making mistakes in my home business any more than the next person, but I have to admit that some of the things that come across my desk or happen when I am working can be quite funny. Being able to laugh at myself or at some of the kooky things other people do can make the day go by faster and help alleviate some of that every day stress… Yesterday, I sent off a very detailed email to someone who I have not actually met in person yet but with whom I will be working with … Continue reading →

Personal Pet Peeve—Repetition and Having to do Things Over

I can often be found writing about all the things I love about working from home and running my own home business working for myself. I thought that in order to provide a bit of balance, I might share one of my big work pet peeves—having to do things over, wasting time, or too much repetition with things! As a solo worker here in my home office there isn’t anyone to catch my mistakes for me or anyone who I can pawn off the work I don’t want to do over, so I get stuck with it myself (even if … Continue reading →

Are There REALLY Missed Opportunities?

When I was younger, I used to feel very pressed by time. I felt like any time spent doing “nothing” was definitely time wasted. I also couldn’t help but have this nagging feeling that I was missing opportunities right and left. For some reason, years spent as a single parent have helped me to develop a different outlook on time, opportunities, and patience… Over the years, I have come to a very different belief system than the one I started out with and I really do think it is due to what I have been through as a single parent–divorce, … Continue reading →

Haste Makes Waste

This has always been one of my favorite old sayings—mostly because it speaks to me and my temperament: I am one of those people who SO has a tendency to get going too fast and make mistakes; the type of person who might start a project or test without reading all the instructions—so I need to be reminded to slow down and take my time so that I don’t make a mess of things… When it comes to a small home business, we often think that the more we do in terms of quantity, the more balls we juggle in … Continue reading →