Surprise Leaf Blower

I had everything all set up.  The handouts.  The fancy notebooks.  The beautiful benches in the shade overlooking the river.

I was excited and nervous to facilitate an offsite for a group of execs.

They were 5 minutes away and I was in final preparation mode.  Review my notes… check.  Deep breaths… check.  Shake it off… check.

And then… the blaring sound of a leaf blower.  Not 30 yards away from this amazing spot I had prepared for the offsite.

It was almost comical how that sound pierced my carefully curated feeling of positivity around the offsite.

I couldn’t help but smirk to myself “this is supposed to be a learning moment isn’t it?”  ugh.

The thoughts that took over first were doom and gloom. “This is going to ruin everything!”  “I should have planned this better.”

Then I moved to panicked action mode. “Maybe I should scramble for another spot?” “Maybe I beg him to adjust his plan?”

Then finally I took a few breaths and decided to go ask the guy what his plans were.  He said “I’ll be done in about 30 minutes.”

And by the time folks showed up, the noise had honestly kind of faded into the background. Pretty soon it was gone completely.

And the offsite went well - despite all manner of background activity.

So what did I learn? Well…

- I really really dislike the sound of leaf blowers.

- That voice in my head that tells me everything is going to be terrible is really loud, but not very accurate.

- I wanted everything to go perfectly and the leaf blower sabotaged that.  But in reality - nothing goes perfectly and that was something I was going to have to accept sooner or later.

- There is only so much preparation you can do. How well things go often comes down to being present and grounded in the moment and going with the flow.