Re-View of the Day

Do you know what you did today? Look again.

I was hanging out with my nephew the other day. He's a teenager and, like most teenagers (like a lot of people, really), his mood can change faster than Lady Gaga changes outfits.

I was helping him with his math homework. This is often an exercise in patience and tact; he does not enjoy math. He'd stare at the problem. He'd write it down. He'd scrabble with the steps, scritching his pencil across the paper as he thought. And, eventually, he'd arrive at the answer. It was slow-going, but he was getting it.

And then we reached a problem that he couldn't figure out. He tried. I tried to help him through it. He tried again. I tried again. No luck. After struggling with it for a while, I told him to skip it, told him he could see if his teacher could explain it in class the next day. We continued with the rest of the assignment.

That night, as I was saying goodnight to him, the good mood vanished.

"This is stupid. I'm not tired. I shouldn't have to go to bed. This entire day has sucked!"

I sat on the floor next to his bed. (He's got a reverse-loft, so there's not enough room to sit on his bed without hitting my head.)

"Really? Nothing good has happened all day?"

He shook his head. I sighed. I started asking him about specific parts of his day. Things that had gone wrong, such as not figuring out the math problem. Things that had gone right -- figuring out all the other math problems. He managed to come up with a lot of things he'd done well during the day, and we talked about how to do more of those sorts of things more often. We also talked about how he might be able to avoid some of the problems he'd had throughout the day. Within five minutes, he'd calmed down. His day no longer seemed so bad. And the following day looked promising, too.

If you take five minutes to review your day, you can figure out what worked and how to repeat it, and figure out what didn't and how to avoid it.

Say what?

Stating your case quickly and clearly sometimes gets you what you want.

Several years ago my sister, my nephew, and I were running errands. It was late, and everyone was ready for dinner--my nine-year-old nephew particularly. He didn't react well to hunger, so I knew there wasn't time to head home and make dinner. Fortunately, the town offered plenty of restaurant choices, though a sit-down restaurant probably would take too long, too. Fast food it was.

I was driving, so I made the announcement:

"We're gonna run through a drive-through. Burger King or Taco Johns?"

My nephew immediately balked. "I wanna go to McDonalds."

I tried explaining that McDonalds was the absolutely worst fast food restaurant for a vegetarian (can't even eat their fries, and their salads all had chicken on them). But he was hungry, tired, and cranky as only a nine-year-old can be.

"Let's try this again. Instead of whining and getting mad, how about you tell me why it's so important that we go to McDonalds instead of Burger King."

"It won't matter."

"Try me. But calmly."

So he did. This was the last day to get a particular Happy Meal toy. He had all the rest from the series, but my parents hadn't had time to take him to McDonalds over the past week (a weekly ritual of theirs), so he didnt have this one.

I remember how important things like that can be. And my dinner could wait till I dropped my sister and nephew off. We went to McDonalds. But if he hadn't been able to explain in less than five minutes why going to McDonalds was so important to him, we wouldn't have.

What position of yours can you explain to an adversary in just five minutes to make a difference in your life?