Puddle Perspective

Intro Music:
Welcome to An Owner’s Guide for Your Life, the podcast that combines psychology, coaching, common sense and fun. I’m Tracey Browning, an entrepreneur, life coach, and lover of people. Now let’s talk about how to live, love, make money, and change the world.

Tracey:
Hey, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve had a little perspective adjustment over the past few days and it all started with a puddle.

There’s a community well that is right behind our backyard, and our neighborhood association uses it for irrigation. Now, about a year and a half ago or so it started leaking. And this is a problem for us because it sits a little bit uphill from our backyard.

Guess what happens when the well leaks and it’s uphill from your backyard? We get big puddles in the back corner of our yard, and it’s our dog’s favorite part of the backyard because that’s the corner that Mozzi always runs to, and he jumps up and down and barks at Brown Dog. Brown Dog is the dog who lives a few houses up from us.

Obviously, this is the best corner of the yard and my 100 and some pound white Golden Doodle bouncing repeatedly in the puddles, good heavens, it’s a mess. And we’re having to clean his feet and not just his feet because he gets a good deep puddle and a good hard bounce or two. He looks more like a Dalmatian with all the mud splotches.

We were just getting tired and frustrated. We’re washing his paws, his legs, his belly over and over. And we’re also seeing our yard wash away- all the rivulets.

Anyway, we worked through this long laborious process to get the well fixed. And actually what wound up happening is they just turned it off. And things were good.

But a few weeks ago, the landscape company planted these really beautiful pansies up in front of the neighborhood and they turned the well back on to water the pansies.

And after a few days, guess what? A big old puddle in our backyard again.
So we’re back at it. We are washing the dog paws. Sigh, my goodness. And we’re back to work and trying to get the well turned off. And it’s not an easy, simple, “Hey, somebody turn it off.” and no, we can’t just go flip the switch. We just can’t do that.

So the other morning, I was having my coffee and I was looking out the patio doors, glaring at this puddle like that’s going to help anything. But it was making me feel better at the moment. So I’m glaring and sipping coffee and a flock of birds settled in.

So I watched these birds, these little brownish black birds. I don’t know what kind they were, some kind of sparrow, we’ll just say, but there’s probably 20 some birds and they are all in this puddle. Oh, my gosh. Some of them hop in and they dip their wings and flutter around and shake it off and they’re all chirping away and some of them are looking through the grass and then there’s like, hey, now it’s your turn. So some of them move out and others move in and it was just so fun to watch.

Here they are getting cleaned and refreshed and chirping away. And it’s like ten minutes worth of bird bath in this mud puddle then off they flew.

I was really glad that I witnessed this because it gave me some appreciation for that puddle. Now, not so much appreciation that I want to keep it in my yard. I do not.

But it helped me think of how one thing can mean something different to everyone.

I see the puddle as a nuisance.
It turns my brown dog, not my brown dog- it turns my white dog brown. He turns into brown dog. So my white dog gets turned brown. My yard washes away and the puddle’s just a total nuisance.

Mozzi, my golden doodle, he sees the puddle- I don’t exactly know how he sees the puddle. I really think he just doesn’t see the puddle. Never once has he complained about it. It sure doesn’t stop him from hanging out in the corner of the yard to bark at neighboring brown dog. So it’s just a non-event for him.

The birds see the puddle as a delight. It was a great place to hang out. It was refreshing and they drank and they bathed and chitter-chattered.

This was just a really good lesson in perspective.
The very same puddle could be a nuisance, a nonevent or a delight.
Just depends on who you are and what you do with it.

So there’s my perspective from a puddle.

I appreciate your listening!

For a transcript of this episode or for more information about life and mindset coaching, visit my website https://www.tbrowning.com/.