All I need to know in life I learned from Ice Fishing?
I had a great time learning how to ice fish with my 83 year old Uncle yesterday. I watched in amazement as he spent the better part of an hour in preparation for the big event, shoveling a path onto the lake, drilling holes in the ice, measuring the depth to the bottom of the lake to prepare the line and baiting hooks with maggots! Finally, we were ready to go and dropped our lines in, ready to catch the “big one”. After about an hour, and 12 new ice holes drilled, I asked my Uncle if we were ever going to catch a fish. He told me that he had no idea, and that all we could do was show up, be prepared and let the rest happen naturally.
As I sat in the beautiful sunshine, surrounded by pine trees on his private lake, I couldn’t help but ponder the truth in his words. While ice fishing, there clearly was nothing I could do to achieve my goal of catching a fish.
In fact, showing up and being prepared was all I could really do. How often is that true in the rest of our lives? When we attend a trade show, a customer meeting or a job interview, all we can really do is show up and be prepared and open to what happens next. So often we are disappointed in ourselves when things don’t go the way we had hoped, but the truth is the outcome was never in our control, only the “showing up and being present” part.
For the next major event in your life, I want you to focus on the parts that are 100% under your control, and NOTHING ELSE!! Make sure you are on time, looking your best, that you have planned out your objectives for the meeting, that you have the tools and equipment need to do your job (including a positive attitude). It’s the effort that really counts, and when we consistently improve our effort, we enjoy a greater probability of successful outcomes.
