I got a work-related email Thursday that made my stomach churn. It was from a client asking me about an issue I’d managed to avoid to avoid talking with him about. I knew he wouldn’t be happy with a decision I’d made related to his account — and I dreaded the day when I would have to deal with it. That day had come.
For a few minutes, I stewed in my unhappiness. I worried about how I was going to handle it. And then something finally clicked in my brain. I forced myself to ask the question I needed to ask.
“What is it that I need to learn from this?”
It sounds ridiculously naive, but for the last few years, that one question has saved me from a lot of grief. It doesn’t protect me from my own mistakes, but it puts me in the right frame of mind to deal with problems. But this isn’t some technique I learned from a book.
It’s something I learned from the experience of a woman who says she died briefly and visited heaven. It might sound crazy, but it’s been useful for me.

Self-disclosure of flaws is how I stop myself from deceiving you
Apple’s Steve Jobs is dead
FRIDAY FUNNIES
You can change your story, but you first must throw away the old ones
Goodbye, Mother
‘Tolerant’ left seethes with hate if you don’t accept ‘gender theory’
Sometimes, one dream is enough to change your life, if you believe it
Death of stranger’s dog reminds me how much dogs mean to us