(Ahhh….post is sooo long….but soo important)
I’m in Cincinnati right now and I’m not gonna lie, I’m having flashbacks to the worst training day…ever. I was brand new and the whole training was a cluster. People stared blankly, asked why they were required to come, and the CFO of the organization kept interrupting me (more on this in a minute).
It’s time.
A while back someone looked at me and said “you want to live in this world of Grey’s Anatomy. You think that’s how life should work.”
And my response? Yes, 100%, I want to live in the world Shonda Rhimes created. Aside from all characters being beautiful, they have a magical way of articulating the hardest, most vulnerable experiences of humans.
To celebrate my love of Grey’s, I’m going to share with you some of the most thoughtful lessons I’ve learned from those who wander the halls of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital.
Lesson one: tomorrow I will be better.
Dr. Bailey’s first day a chief was a epic fail. At the end of Episode two of season 12 she owned up to her fail with *this* simple sentence…tomorrow I will be better.
Back to my Cincy story…when my epic fail of a training was over I said things such as…
1. Well, if only I would have been given more information.
2. Well, a more seasoned trainer should have been selected. They knew I was new.
3. Well, it’s not my fault they weren’t engaged…
Seriously, I needed to look at myself in the mirror and say, girl please. Stop. Own that mess. And simply commit to “be better tomorrow.”
One of the most powerful choices we can make is to be better tomorrow.
However, when we mess up, we usually do the exact opposite.
We blame. We deflect. We deny. We justify. We excuse. We defend. We rationalize. We create reasons why our mistakes, words, and actions are warranted.
Weird. When we blame, deflect, deny, etc…we don’t feel better 
.
The reason: all those behaviors are defense mechanisms..and these are strategies that are used to protects us from the anxiety that arises from *unacceptable* thoughts or feelings. The defense mechanisms are a product of fear (umm, pretty sure my pride and reputation was on the line in Cincy).
Now, here’s what I’m going to say with all the love in the world.
Stop it.
The power behind “tomorrow I will be better” is that the ONLY thing you are owning is you didn’t do it perfectly. You can’t change what happened. No matter how much you ignore, deny, deflect, rationalize…you can’t change your past behavior.
But you can change what you do, starting tomorrow.
And what a wonderful world it would be…if we all simply decided to stop being defensive. Stop beating ourselves up over past actions. What a wonderful world it would be if we simply committed to doing better tomorrow.
