Dealing with Incorrect Judgment
Jim Rohn said, “Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgment, repeated everyday.”
Have you ever watched a TV show or a “hollywood-ish” type movie and while watching the actors going the wrong direction, you find yourself screaming at the TV, “Don’t do it like that!” because you just know from your experience that the characters on screen are going to fall into the “trap.”
If you are an experienced expert at something you’ve got extra ammunition to get frustrated when watching the portrayals of convenience. I’m a former submariner and military enthusiast, so watching a hollywoodish submarine or military film, I’ll tend to cringe if I see anything that’s totally ridiculous, knowing that virtually any real situation would not result in such asinine stupidity coming from a professional serviceman.
This leads me to hats.
“Why hats?” You may ask. “I don’t get it.”
I like to wear hats. Over the years, I had gone through several straw fedoras until the crowns broke down from wear. I wanted to replace a particular favorite, a Stetson that was reportedly a style worn by Michael Jordan. Nice, stylish, good fitting for a hat under $100.
Well, I was at a local hat shop looking for a new hat and while I was trying on some really nice panama styled hats, we are talking $1000+ hats (Wow), the very nice lady there got my attention and, without making me feel like to dipstick, politely instructed me, “Sir, you should always put on an remove your hat by using two hands on the brim and not use the crown. I know,” she sympathized, “it’s really so convenient to grab the crown.”
Immediately life made sense to me. The stars came into alignment and I had a born-again experience all at once.
Then I thought about the great hats, even the ones I really enjoyed, how I destroyed them from being ignorant to the truth.
You see, that’s what happens when you watch too much TV, or just follow the uninformed masses when they are all basing their actions on incorrect judgments on how to do something as simple as the everyday routine of putting on and taking off a brimmed hat.
When you’re growing up and into adulthood you think things are right if you see “everyone else” doing it that way. As Jim Rohn warned, “You can be sincere, and also be sincerely wrong.”
Last August I took the family down to Hearst Castle and went on the tour. We watched a vintage home film of Mr William R. Hearst as he was getting off his horse on his ranch. As he walked across the camera, he took off his cowboy hat, and wouldn’t you know? He used two hands on the brim to take off his hat.
See what happens when you do not hang out with the real hat wearers?
(Oh, by the way, don’t mess around with someone’s hat especially if you cannot tell the difference between a $100 hat and a $2000 hat).
OK, seriously, what’s your take away? Your takeaway is this:
What is something you care about in your life that you have been destroying because no one has corrected your faulty judgment? What areas are suffering? Maybe you need input from an expert in that area.
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