Ack.
Don’t you hate when you mess up meeting arrangement, let someone down, screw up the plans?
Or when you have to cancel or disappoint, deliver bad news, you’re lost, you’re late, or….
….What about when you forget a date or you’re a No Show for an appointment you really care about?
I did that yesterday.
My morning was all set up for my presentation (Eating Peace, you can watch the replay here), so no individual clients were scheduled all morning. The calendar was cleared so I could teach my awesome free introduction course on the movement from war to peace when it comes to eating, food or the body (or really any compulsive repetitive deal).
When I woke up yesterday morning, full of enthusiasm for my upcoming intro webinar and making some final touches on it, I had a small (not unheard of) glitch where I needed to reboot my whole computer, turn off and on the internet, and load up my webinar slides from scratch so it was live and ready to go at the appointed hour.
Sometimes, doing something like that unexpectedly makes me a little nervous.
I want to be ready for my presentation! It needs to work!
I don’t exactly love the technical disconnects–although, I’ve had my share and they can be CRAZY and almost funny, they’re sooooo absurd sometimes. (Like when on the very first day of a huge planned long-term course you have to drive to Starbucks to connect to the internet because there’s a windstorm….which happened to me last year on the first day of Eating Peace Online, but I digress).
So after all the getting stuff in order during the morning….just before my webinar started (phew, it looked like things were going to go OK) I opened up my calendar for the day to review my schedule.
Cool. Next appointment, 1:00 pm.
Without realizing, I’m looking at the wrong week, even though it’s a Tuesday.
Same hours blocked out for Eating Peace all morning. So that didn’t throw me off.
Except if I were looking at the CORRECT day, I would see I had a lovely client at noon.
And by the way, to make matters bigger, this client and I had already rescheduled once and taken care to make this Tuesday noon Pacific Time meeting work.
So there I am going along, thinking it’s a different Tuesday a week later, and after my morning Eating Peace presentation is over….
….I head for the gym.
A few minutes into my gym bike ride, I see a message float by on my phone out of the corner of my eye.
As I catch the name, I realize….
….I have just completely missed my client, who has been waiting for me on skype.
Now, while this may not be the biggest faux-pas in the world, or a total mess with egg on your face…..
…..it’s not that normal for me, and I didn’t like it.
The client didn’t either.
(I can soooo understand this).
Here’s the great thing about having The Work buzzing within, though.
I did not feel the shame, sick feeling or worry as I once would have felt.
In the past, this incident might have made me start to wonder what I was doing.
The voice might have kicked in: I’m in the wrong profession, why don’t you pay better attention, WTF, how could I be so disorganized, why don’t you hire an assistant, I’m too non-detail oriented, what’s WRONG with you, what an idiot.
What would it be like, for you, if you made an actual mistake (I raise my hand) but you didn’t hate yourself because you did that?
This is big.
This is a huge piece of opening your mind, with self-inquiry.
Who would you actually be without the belief that you’re the problem, the one who was at fault, the one who F*c#$d up the whole thing?
Many years ago, on November 11th, 1990, I got married.
I am no longer married to the man I was partnered with that wonderful day, which was full of celebration and some excitement, and happiness. He’s the father of my two amazing children I love so much. He’s an awesome person.
It seems like it would be cool to still be married, to have not had something go “wrong”, to have not made any mistakes, to have remained “together” and pool assets and share a life.
Except, not really.
I love that story, but it is not at all required.
It is truly just a fairy tale.
I did The Work on it, about a hundred times, and now I honestly never think about that alternative “perfect” parallel universe where something called marriage happens until the end of life.
In fact, what happened was the best thing ever, for my own spiritual growth and awareness, for my own freedom.
I grew so much confidence, generosity, experience, joy, surrender, acceptance, and openness…..
….it’s hard to remember who I once was before.
Maybe everything really does happen right on time.
Even a missed appointment.
“We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.” ~ Desmond Tutu
Much love, Grace