Worst Case Scenario

Wednesday, August 28, 2013



A few days ago I was watching a sport's psychologist talk about how to build confidence in our kids and one of the things he suggested was teaching them to plan for failure. We won't always succeed and things will not always go perfectly, so if we have a plan for how we will deal with failure then we will not be devastated when it happens and we will be able to jump into action.

 But when you have an over active imagination, like I do, your imagined failures are pretty dramatic.

For example:

Yesterday we had the four way inspection at our house, the four way is the big inspection before they start hanging drywall and finishing the exterior to make sure the plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and structure are all up to code. I was charged with sitting there while the inspector did his thing.

I was a huge ball of nerves, so I did what had been suggested, I came up with a way to deal with what I imagined would be the worst case. It went something like this:

Inspector: I am done with my inspection and I have some bad news. This house has so many problems and honestly there is no way to fix  some of them. I am afraid this house will never pass inspection so the best thing for you to do is burn it to the ground, try to collect the insurance money, and start from scratch.

(How decided I would respond): Do you have a match?

See, no good.

And although the house didn't pass inspection, and we have two pages of things that need to be fixed, at least they can be fixed and I am not left standing there with a burnt match watching my dreams go up in smoke.

So maybe there is something to this after all.

And now some pictures of the house (remember last month when it was just a hole in the ground?):



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