On Being Imperfect

I screwed up today. 

I missed a meeting with an important person in the organization I am really excited to be working with this year as a leadership and team building consultant/coach. 

No excuses, I made a mistake and missed it. 

Immediately after that missed meeting, I had another meeting where no one showed up.  

It was the most perfect beautiful example of immediate karma I have experienced in a long time. 

After waiting and sending emails, I moved on and got to work on other things. 

Soon emails started coming in apologizing for missing the meeting and wasting my time. 

More than karma, this was a perfect example of humans being human. 

And I believe in letting humans be human which means make mistakes, be imperfect. 

I hear a lot of complaints about missed meetings from people in all industries and how their time was wasted. 

We put too much importance on moments like these when in reality, the time “wasted” by that missed meeting would not have been otherwise used in a way that would have changed the outcome of our life, or day. 

The biggest impact on our day is our indulgence in the emotions of anger and frustration in thinking that it did.

We aren’t that important. Life happens. People forget. Your life won’t end. (Unless it’s someone forgetting to show up for a life or death situation…) 

We allow small things to get big, our ego to convince us we should be angry. 

We own our responses, our decision of what to do with the time we have. 

A good leader sees the opportunity in the obstacle. 

The email I got from the leader I missed my meeting with acknowledged that I gave him back time to get work done by missing the meeting. 

Get curious and notice when you are your own biggest time suck. Then get excited because you have control over that, not over others. 

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About Becky

Becky Schmooke (pronounced “Smoke”) is a Mindful Leadership Consultant and Speaker, focused on providing action based mindfulness and leadership training to organizations and businesses who are ready to do things differently.

Becky’s Mindful Kitchen, is located outside of Iowa City, and provides truly unique team building and leadership retreats, strategic planning workshops, private parties and classes and weekly summer camps for kids. The commercial teaching kitchen, treehouse, archery range, bush craft skills, first aid training, wood fired pizza oven, chickens, baby goats and timber adventure playground provides endless opportunities for hands on activities.

As a mom to three girls, 60 chickens, 4 goats, 2 dogs and a fire fighter’s wife- life is never boring and provides Becky with endless stories which she uses to illustrate her approach to mindfulness in daily posts on social media.

In all that she does, Becky has one goal, to build confidence in others to take action to live their best life, not just pass time.