Celebrations and swivels

E43: Making the most when dealing with disappointments

Greetings from London.

We had gathered here to celebrate a landmark birthday for my mother. And as luck would have it, she fell victim to Covid just days before her birthday. Thankfully, she is now on the mend. Still some heavy, listless days. But she recovered sufficiently to share a short masked muted celebration with immediate family.

There was a special moment on her actual birthday. A full-arc double rainbow showed up over her home - a rare good-luck blessing if ever I’ve seen one. If we had the time, I’m sure I could have found that pot of gold through the magic of googlemaps. Rarely have I seen such a bold, clearly anchored rainbow. There is no filter on this photo.

Which brings me to the theme of today’s newsletter: Pivoting on a dime. Dealing with disappointments. Making the most with what you got.

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Swivels

The word pivot is over-used these days, so I’ve chosen swivels. Something we had to do a lot on our recent trip to Scotland. We had a wonderful vacation but … our entire vacation was planned way back in the winter months - via train rather than road. Now, if you have been in the UK you may know that they had a 3-day rail strike which fell on days we were travelling.

It could have spelled disaster. But we have had practice at this. (Sidebar - it is wonderful to travel with adult children who assist with the swivels and make suggestions.)

An excerpt from a chapter in my book “Contours of Courageous Parenting - Tilting Towards Better Decisions.” (For those with the book, this is the chapter with the story of us trekking in Nepal.) Click here to buy the book.

AIM FOR THE BEST. PREPARE FOR THE REST.

Getting organized ahead of time, making plans that can expand to the boundaries to which they will be pushed, planning with a margin of error.

This falls under the HOW (category of) decision behaviours, as it helps us maintain purpose once we have made a decision.

Most people try to predict or control the future to ensure the result they want from a decision.

Instead, this is about treating your decision like an equation:

• Hope that things will turn out the way you plan

• Know that there is a chance it won’t

• Prepare for the variables that might create different eventualities. Be alert to the possibility. Be ready to read the signals that indicate a shift.

Why? Because the world doesn’t stay constant. Conditions that existed at the moment we made our original decision earlier in the year have since moved. Point in case on our trip: Covid, train strikes, great warm weather instead of cold, rainy days.

Some of our swivels:

• Our tour company replaced our cancelled train ride from Inverness to Portree with a bus journey through the Scottish Highlands. As my daughter noted, it worked out better. We drove along the length of Loch Ness, then Loch Cluanie where we saw stags on the banks, Loch Duich with Donan Castle that could have been straight from the set of Game of Thrones or Outlander, feral goats on Loch Alsh and over the bridge onto the majestic Isle of Skye.

• The ripple effect of the strikes meant that many trains were cancelled, delayed and oversubscribed. Standing the long journey into Inverness because all the seats were taken proved a great opportunity for conversations with other travelers from Scotland and across Europe. We started watching ahead - scanning for changes in the next day’s train schedule and adjusting our travel to maximize our time and experience in the next town(s).

• Celebrating Mum’s birthday on a different day, in a way that matched her energy levels as she recovered.

And talking about pivots … have you been following UK politics this week?

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Bitings:

New word of the week (thanks Tilter Sharon!):

Donan Castle and other views from our bus ride to the Isle of Skye, with hills that reached into the hazy heavens, and plummeted back down to the Lochs:

Need to know where we stayed or trekked while in Scotland? Do you want to see more photos? Drop me a DM or hit reply to this email.

Hope you are enjoying your summer, Tilters. Stay healthy and happy. And for those five subscribers in our Tilt community who live in the southern hemisphere, enjoy your days as they start getting longer.

Karena

PS. Missing a family photo in the online version of this newsletter? I only include them in the emailed version of the newsletter sent out to my Tilt subscribers. Click here to subscribe for free: