Happy Monday!

You’re getting a blog on Monday, because I’m going to do a few things for work this morning, and then I’m taking the rest of the week off.  Last week was about making the most of a situation.  This week is about time, perspective, and type 2 fun.

Recap: Diane and a 4-month-old Alice are living with my parents. It’s chaos.  My wife is looking at potential houses to buy, which is totally stressing her out.  My dad goes with my wife to check out houses to help out with Alice.  Anyway, they go to a house and long story short, my dad knocks over the bottle of Alice’s milk and gets it all over the dining room table in the house.  This takes an already stressful situation and makes it worse.  They are frantically cleaning it up, and Diane is worried about potentially ruining someone’s table and is feeling more overwhelmed than ever.  Ultimately, everything is okay.  Fast forward a few hours, and the milk spilling incident has turned from super stressful to hilarious.  They tell the story to my mom when she comes home, and everyone is laughing.  Fast forward to today, and the milk spilling incident is one of our favorite stories to tell.

Let’s connect some dots.  When you read the story above, I hope you smiled or chuckled a bit.  It’s kind of funny.  It’s also a situation we can all relate to.  Maybe you didn’t spill milk, but we’ve all made a mess which turned a stressful situation into something even worse.  However, with a little time and perspective, we can begin to see the humor in the moment.  My family calls these kinds of things type 2 fun, a phrase we learned from a friend.  Type 1 fun is when the situation is enjoyable and funny as it happens.  Type 2 fun is when the situation is bad at the moment, but later on you see the joy and humor in it.  As I get older, I’ve learned that most initially stressful situations in life end up as Type 2 fun.

The challenge: When you run into something tough/stressful/bad will you be able to create the distance and perspective to see the joy and humor?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry