This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and life coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into office etiquette on various real-world IT topics in detail.
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Over the holidays, I visited my family (as many people do). During on conversation with my mother, I was offering to pick up a movie for mom to watch.
Mom: “Don’t bother. All the movies are in discs these days. I like videos and they don’t make them anymore.”
“Well, you have a DVD player in your reading room. We could…”
Mom:”No,No. It’s connected to the small TV. I don’t like that TV.”
“No, problem. We’ll just connect it to your big TV in here. You are right … it’s much better watching this set. We’ll just…”
Mom: “Don’t bother. Your sister tried it and she couldn’t do it. Your cousin tried it and he couldn’t do it. They both say that the TV is too old to be connected.”
“Well, it won’t hurt to…”
Mom: “Don’t bother.” And I decided to drop it for now.
The next morning, while mom was still asleep, I took a closer look. I took the DVD from the small set and successfully moved it to the larger set in the family room. Since I knew mom already worked the VCR machine, I wrote out the instructions for the DVD as close to the VCR players instructions as possible. When mom woke up, I played a DVD for her and she was very excited.
I realize that many people believe that “history repeats itself” as rationalizing for not trying things others have failed. But you are not the same person that tried before. They don’t know what you know. They don’t have the same experience, background or resources that you do. Even if you are the one that tried and failed before … you are currently a different person than you were last year, last month and even yesterday.
What past limitations are you using to hold you up?