Resilience in the Rain

Posted by John Livesay in blog | 0 comments

In October 2020, I decided to put money down on a lot where new homes were being built just south of the Austin airport.

Little did I know, this decision would start a journey of testing my resilience, patience, and organizational skills.

After I picked my lot, I then had to decide what I wanted the house to look like. Normally this entails going to a design studio, but during a pandemic, most of it had to be done on Zoom.

There’s a book called The Paradox of Choice. It says that when we have too many choices, it is overwhelming and can even be depressing.

Luckily for me, my friend Phillip Sherman is a professional interior designer, and he was able to help me.

Decisions can get overwhelming.

There are big decisions like what kind of stone and brick you want on the outside of your house to small ones such as what color should the gutters be painted, what color do you want the grout in your shower to be, and what type of toilet paper holder do you want.

The goal was to have the house done by the end of February. What was unforeseen was a shortage of lumber on top of a freeze in Austin that was unprecedented, which caused the house not to be finished until the end of May.

Not knowing when you’re going to move is very stressful. Some of the concerns I had was whether or not I could extend the lease on the condo I was renting and when I should order the movers.

While it was a lot of fun to visit the house on a regular basis and see the progress, there were also mini twists and turns along the way, including light fixtures being on backorder, the driveway needing to be repaired, and the washer/dryer not being available due to the pandemic of shortages.

If you ever applied for a loan, you know that can be incredibly stressful. Trying to convince a bank that being a speaker during a pandemic with no live events should still qualify me for a loan was challenging, to say the least.

While juggling the many back-and-forth requests with the loan office, I was also scheduling an inspector to come to the house while getting my real estate agent to go with me on something called a blue tape walk-through. This is when you get to walk-through and put blue tape everywhere they have missed a spot that needs to be touched up or on a mirror that has a dent in it. Once the city inspectors sign off on everything, then I got to go to the title company.

In this case, they were so busy I had to wait over an hour before someone could see me.

Not much has changed in this industry, and I still had to manually sign many pages. On top of that, the keys they gave me were not cut properly and didn’t work. I had to wait until the next day to get the right keys from the builder. The combination of having to wait that long and then getting the wrong keys also added to the list of things I could choose to be stressed out about.

I recently read the book The Energy Bus, and there’s a line in it that says, “I’m too blessed to be stressed.”

I chose to use it as my mantra.

Are you starting to see and feel how all these things could start to chip away at the joy of getting a new home?

Instead of resisting what is happening or complaining about it or losing my temper or getting frustrated, I decided I was going to tell myself a different story.

Let’s look at all the wonderful things that they got right and let’s be grateful that the interest rates are so low right now. That’s the story I chose to focus on.

The night before the movers were scheduled to come, I picked up my friend Phillip at the airport, and we went right to the new home with keys that let us in. It happened to be in the middle of a huge lightning storm, with a lot of wind. After only being in the house for 10 minutes, we started to see water coming through the electrical light fixture in the kitchen ceiling, and quickly place a bucket underneath to save the brand new floors.

I chose to see this as a little bit of drama. I decided that “big drama” would be if the ceiling collapsed.

I texted the builders and they sent roofers first thing the next morning to fix the problem. This was happening concurrently while the movers were coming to pack my things into the truck.

One of the things that I had bought during the pandemic was a motorized standup desk that allowed me to stand up and have my computer go up and down depending on whether I wanted to stand or sit. When the movers came to me and said they were sorry but they had broken the desk, I was numb to bad news. I  just simply said, “Send me the pictures and I’ll file a report to get reimbursed later.”

After the movers unpacked the last box and left, my friend Philip and I were exhausted, but we decided to go out and treat ourselves to a nice meal at a nearby restaurant.

This whole thing is a metaphor, I thought to myself. We are all always going to have some rain in our life.

How do we stay resilient in the rain? Whether it’s a leaking roof or waiting on other people, we always have the choice of deciding whether something is going to knock us down and keep us down or just be a temporary bump in the road.

I’m now happy to say that my first weekend has been filled with gratitude and creativity as I decided with my friend Philip where to hang art.

(Have you ever noticed how things that have been hanging in your house for a long time are suddenly seen in a new way when they’re in a different space?)

I think the same is true of our life. We can take relationships for granted. We can take many things for granted until we don’t have them.

Remember that you are the movie director of your own life, and if you don’t like what you’re saying or thinking, you can say cut at any time and tell yourself a different story.

Email me at [email protected] and let me know your own story of resilience!