I believe it is easier to follow a leader with a limp. You know, follow someone who has warts and flaws, but works diligently to lead despite them. Here comes a wart.
Sunday morning, I’m working on my honey do list before we roll out to church. I’ve got a slam-dunk on the list that I can’t wait to knock out. Replace the toilet seat in the kid’s bathroom. Did I mention this was going to be a slam-dunk? BTW, my wife Marion’s love language is Acts of Service.
I’m also LOVE fixing breakfast on the weekend. I’m not sure if it is a love language or not, but I think it should be. Can someone please let Gary Chapman know that he needs an appendix in The Five Love Languages that include Waffles as Sixth love language?
So, I’ve got 9 minutes in between when I need to remove the cooking batch of waffles and pour in the batter for the next batch. 9 minutes! That’s about 6 minutes more time than I need to replace a toilet seat.
So I grab the new toilet seat, a wrench, a cocky attitude, and run two steps at a time up towards the kid’s bathroom.
In 30 seconds I get the nut off the bolt on the left side of the toilet with just my hand. Too easy. I reach under the seat to get the nut of the right side bolt and it doesn’t budge. Well, that’s why I brought the wrench. I take a few turns with it and nothing.
The rub is that the toilet is so close to the tub that I can’t stick my fat head between the two to see what’s up. I try again with the wrench, still nothing. No bite. Am I turning it the wrong way? No. Am I missing the nut and only grabbing the bolt? No. Killing me! The plastic nut is just mangled from the idiot that over tightened it during installation four years ago. (me)
Long story short, I’ve burned the second batch of waffles. I’m yelling at Mare to swap them out. My pride is in the toilet, almost literally as I’ve now been sitting with my face too close to it for over 20 minutes. This is a toilet seat I’m replacing for crying out loud.
Spoiler alert, I do get the old seat off and the new one on, but it took over 30 minutes. I now hate waffles. There is absolutely no way Waffles are a love language. I hope no one reached out to Gary Chapman yet.
Bottom line, you never know when you need emotional margin. I most often need it when I least expect it. So, keeping emotional margin in our lives is not a task we engage in from time to time, but a lifestyle we want to lean in towards all the time.
Learning how to restore emotional margin in your overloaded life is a great leadership-coaching topic. You can learn from my mistakes.
Click here to schedule a FREE Phone Call and see how Coaching with Jeff can help you restore emotional, as well as physical, financial and time reserves to you overloaded life.