Resourceful-Mom

Just accident prone, I guess

During my twenties, I often found myself in an accident of some sort.  Aside from running through life seemingly without brakes, my driving history reflected the same.  As with most accidents in my life, thankfully, I was more of an inconvenience to those around me.  No one was injured during my Mr. Magoo moments.

A brief commercial intermission for those of you with a blank stare at the mention of Mr. Magoo…

At one time, my car payment and my car insurance together totaled $600 a month.  That was about $60 a month more than what I was paying for rent.  Talk about throwing money out of the window.  I made outrageous insurance payments well into my thirties as each accident remained a part of my driving record for about 5 years.

Somewhere along the line, I decided to stop having accidents.  I’d noticed that most, if not all, of my accidents were as a result of my simply not paying attention. After my decision, the frequency of the accidents stopped. “There has GOT to be a life lesson in this”, I thought.

My accidents were your typical dumb mistakes.  Things like assuming the car in front of you continued with the right turn since they “clearly had it” so, while looking left waiting for your opportunity to merge into traffic, you give it gas and WHAM!!  Where did the car in front of me come from??!!  Or, thinking the car in front of you will go through the caution light so you speed up; however, at some point (unbeknownst to you) the other driver changed their mind – Crunch (again)!!  Then there was the all famous, looking down for a split second – I swear – to change the radio station and, immediately upon looking up, being greeted with brakes lights in EVERY lane. Take it from me, reflexes fail you at that point.  With no other accidents other than the one YOU just caused, there’s no chance in explaining your way out of a ticket for following too close.  Yep, just not paying attention was kind of a reoccurring theme in my life.

What if, by paying attention to our mistakes in life….Ok, maybe you don’t call them mistakes, maybe you’d prefer to  call them things that just didn’t turn out as expected (repeatedly).  What if, looking at the pieces of the puzzle that consistently don’t work and consciously deciding to do something different, you lessen what you don’t want and, by default, get more of what you do want.  Even if you don’t get it right the first time, you have to be happy not getting bitten by the exact same dog in the exact same spot. I’ll leave the where you get bitten to your imagination.  Or, to coin a phrase by my mom, “Ain’t nobody tired til you get tired, cuz when you get tired you’ll do something about it”.  Sheer genius, I tell ya!

What if it were this simple for attracting the perfect mate, advancing in your career or creating a better circle of friends?  I have, on purpose, made different decision when faced with an opportunity to go down the same path and have been pleasantly surprised with the results.  What if this works for everything?  Nah, it can’t possibly be that simple? Right??