In Make Even Smarter Choices, Uncategorized

If you read this blog, you are probably a doer.  Show you a problem, and you get busy fixing it.  You believe in the motto Don’t just stand there, do something. And for many situations, that is indeed a winning formula.

Organize the garage
Update your resume
Leave a toxic relationship
Call that old friend
Get the medical check-up

A long list that requires attention and commitment to get done.   So “doing something” works well…until it doesn’t.

Have you ever heard an infant with colic?  They cry inconsolably.  When this happens to new parents, they tend to panic because “doing” doesn’t work.  They change the diaper, feed, rock, walk, sing and bounce, to no affect.

What is a parent to do?

An old pediatrician gave his patients the following advice:

Take a new bar of soap and carefully carve it until you have a piece of soap about the size of a toothpick.  When you have completed the task, call me back.

Invariably when the parents called back, it was to report that the baby had stopped crying.  Of course, the wise doctor knew that would happen.  Carving the soap was a way to give parents something to DO, until the spell of colic had passed.

Some things are not immediately “doable” and for us doers, that means it’s time to carve the soap while the right partner emerges, the grief moves on, the garden grows or the right title for your book arrives…

Sometimes your “doing” can’t move through the challenge at hand.  During those times, focusing on something else may be just what you need to see you through.  What is your rendition of “carving soap”?  What do you do while you are waiting for something to unfold, for the next steps to become clear?  Please let me know!

Until next Tuesday!

Elizabeth

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