Embrace the Process
We found 4 inches of water in our basement Sunday night. Thankfully our basement is unfinished, but it still took two days to clean it out. It definitely was not how we wanted to spend 48 hours of our life. It was pretty crappy to be honest: calling plumbers and insurance, removing items we had stored there, then scrubbing, bleaching, and spraying everything. At the end of it we were sore and tired, and had to play catch-up with all the others things that got put to the side so we could address the water.
But here are some thoughts about what we went through and maybe they'll resonate with your.
1) Breath. Opening the basement door and staring down at 4 inches of water at the base of the stairs took our breath away. It was so discordant that we didn't quite know what to even do for the first several minutes, but then we started breathing and focusing on the task at hand. The first step in taking on the unexpected and jarring events is by taking a huge deep breath, squaring your shoulders, and then moving forward.
2) Embrace the process. When we're moving forward, we're stepping purposefully and intentionally following a process. I had made the phone calls and asked some questions, and then worked with the plumber and insurance agent to outline the process to take care of the problem. Once the process was in place, the only control I had over it was to embrace the steps and do my part to keep it moving forward. Was scrubbing the disgusting floor fun? Not even a little. Was it something I could control and take ownership of to solve the problem? Yes. Focusing on what we CAN do motivates and encourages us to continue working and striving to a solution.
3) Celebrate. The truly ironic thing about this entire story is that about a year ago I had lamented that I really needed to get in the basement and clean the floors and start making it a nicer place. Flash forward to Monday afternoon as I sprayed bleach for the second time and used a shovel to pick up debris. Was the cleaning happening on my timeline? Nope. Was I now accomplishing a goal that I had wanted to do anyway? Yes. I had to shift my mindset to celebrating the end result of the process because it would end up much better than it had started.
Events will always come up that frustrate us and throw us off our plan. It's up to us to make something out of them and end up better off than when we started. 2020 taught us that, and it was reinforced by some water in our basement this week.
