I consider myself fairly handy and ingenuitive when it comes to home improvements – a skill set I no doubt acquired from my father and my grandfather during all the invaluable times we shared together.
Even today, regardless of the household task at hand, I’m always reminded of the two of them. Sometimes I actually feel as though they’re still there guiding me and educating me on an easier way to strip electrical wires or how an ordinary bar of soap rubbed on the threads of a screw make it easier to drive into difficult substrates.
But of all the lessons they taught me perhaps the most important is that there’s more than one way to do something. I not only use this piece of wisdom during any home improvement project, but throughout my personal and professional life almost daily.
Just because something doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to, doesn’t mean you toss in the towel and admit defeat. That just means there’s another way, and many times a better way to accomplish what it is you’ve set out to do.
Though failure has been branded by our society as a word with negative connotations, it doesn’t have to be. Roger Von Oech once remarked, “Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.”
Great article Craig. And very true words of wisdom.