“Every cloud has a silver lining” – various
Chalk this one up to “another time when Dave forgot to practice what he preaches.”
It happens more often than I care to admit. Advice that I give to people that makes perfect sense when I tell it to someone else is exactly what I forget to apply to my own life.
I always tell people that they have to remember that you get to call the first mistake a learning experience. That even the worst of experiences has something positive for you to take away.
And I just “I could’ve had a V-8” smacked myself in the forehead on Friday when I realized how true this was to one of the nastier experiences I’ve had in the past two years…
About a year and a half ago I wrote Guilt By Association: Never Invite the Vampire In based on a series of circumstances that happened to me. Long story short (but you can read it at length if you want to: https://itinthed.com/5734/guilt-by-association/), I wound up having a bad experience due to a new friend that I brought into my social circles and business world who turned out to be not as great as he initially appeared to be. To the point where he cleared out of state with next to no notice to anyone at all, and all sorts of whacky mayhem came to light afterwards that had some blowback on my life. I eventually blocked and banned him from all of my social media accounts…or so I thought.
Because he sent me a LinkedIn request last Wednesday night.
No seriously, he did.
And that fact was rattling around in the back of my subconscious from that moment on. What the hell did this jerk want? Was it an accident? He can’t possibly think I’ve forgotten everything, can he? He certainly can’t think I’d have anything he’d want to hear in my head about him. So what the [blankity] [blanking] [blank] did this [blanking] [blank] want? I mean, I wasn’t going to accept the connection request just to find out, that’s for damned sure, so how do I handle this?
I didn’t know, and so it continued rattling around my brain.
Then along came Friday, and after a particularly intense meeting I decided to get away for a few, took the elevator downstairs, and headed outside to take a lap or two around the building to get centered again…
…and as soon as I walked outside…literally the moment I walked out the door…it happened.
Something clicked. All of the dots suddenly connected. I had an absolute “moment of zen”, as people like to say, and I suddenly remembered a fact that had me laughing out loud a few moments later.
I actually owe a lot to that giant, raging [blanking] [blank].
See, he’s the one that introduced me to the folks who run the studio that we broadcast out of every Monday night.
So if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have gone on a few shows to talk about us and what we do.
If I hadn’t done that, they wouldn’t have reached out about us doing our own show every week.
Without that, we wouldn’t have our show.
Without that, we wouldn’t have the platform that we now have with as many listeners as we now have.
Without that, we wouldn’t have companies now approaching us about sponsoring the show, and giving us a little more breathing room when it comes to things we want to do with our events.
And without that…well, it’s going to be a fun year, folks. Let’s leave it at that for now.
So, as it turns out…the person that I’ve been hating for the better part of the last two years…the one who screwed over so many people and horribly embarrassed me on both personal and professional levels for having brought him around…without him having come into my life and started that chain reaction, none of the rest of those pieces fall into place.
Guess I actually owe him a thank you.
Not that he’ll get one from me outside of this post, since there’s still no way in hell I’m accepting his connection request, and I still sincerely hope to someday see him stripped naked, covered in honey, and strapped down over one of those giant fire ant mounds in South America that you see on the Discovery Channel all of the time…
…but I digress.
The moral of the story here is that even in a situation that cut me awfully deeply and left me extremely bitter and cynical for a while…there’s still a silver lining.
And it’s a really nice one, too.
So take heed, folks – it really is true. The best things can come from the worst experiences. Every cloud has a silver lining. The worst person you’re connected to may be the one who (probably inadvertently) does you the most good in the long run. That which does not kill you makes you stronger. Other random yet appropriate cliché [here]. You get what I’m saying…and hopefully now I’ll remember it as well.
That’s all for this time, folks. Go read something else: https://itinthed.com/read/