To FACE PALM or To FACE PLANT that is the question?

BY HOPE A. BEVILHYMER

Too Face Palm or Face Plant that is the question… You are probably wondering why I would want to do either.  By definition to Face Palm is to physically place your hands flat across your face in a gesture of frustration, embarrassment, shock, surprise or disappointment. To Face Plant is that you fall, and land directly on your face. In my metaphoric world these are very important in decisions I make.

I have Face Palmed many of times over choices and decisions I have made. Most of the Face Palming has occurred because I allowed fear to over run my decisions.  Fear by far can do damage so deep that it can be difficult to bounce back.  There have been opportunities and relationships where I have allowed the fear of the outcome to waiver my choices.  I started to realize awhile ago I don’t like to Face Palm myself.  I do not think anyone would like to do it over and over again.  With the frustration and disappointment that I was experiencing I figured this was not working and I needed a change.

One day I was faced with an opportunity to change my career choice.  I had other ideas of were I wanted my life to be and what I wanted to accomplish. All of these thoughts and ideas I had did not include my further employment with this company.   It made no logical sense for me to just up and quit.  By no means did I dislike the company I was working for.  They treated me well and I loved working with my coworkers.  Day in and day out it was eating at me that I needed to up and quit.  I had no back up employment…I knew I would be in a financial struggle…Then I let this little thing called Fear of the UNKNOWN creep up on me.  I started to doubt my decisions. I started to question everything about it.  It was driving me mad!

Then I thought to myself… You know what how many times have I faced fear in the eyes and won.  How many times have I thought that something is not going to work out and it just fixes itself?  I decided that day too FACE PLANT it… This was the action of letting go of all fears, all doubt, all hesitation, and all worries and just go for it.  When I let go of all those negative butt kickers and just FACE PLANTED, I quit that day. To this day it was one of the best choices that I made.

 I think of Face Planting is just that letting go of the negative and going all in with the decision or choice that you made. Sometimes the outcomes are not always what you hoped for, but you have learned something along the way.  So ask yourself before you make a choice or decision… Do you want to FACE PALM yourself because you should of… would of… could of… done something, but you let FEAR of the outcome to get in the way or Do you want to FACE PLANT and let go of all the negativity, fear and what if and see a beautiful landing that you will hear people say nice FACE PLANT..

Lessons From a Father: Lesson 5

5 Lessons from a Father

By Hope A. Bevilhymer

Whose Laughing At You?

LESSON NUMBER 5:

Over the past several months I have been writing 5 Lessons I learned from my Father. It has been 2 years since his passing and I have compiled a list of things that he has taught me over the years.  With this being the last lesson of this series I thought I would recap on the past 4 Lessons he taught me.

LESSON 1: REMEMBER THE 5:  This lesson was about the people who are in your life. 
LESSON 2: THERE IS A STORM BREWING:  This lesson discussed how there are storms that arise within our lives.  It just depends on how we weather the storms.
LESSON 3: DON'T BE SO DUMB:  This lesson talked about how we should use our brains to accomplish things.  Work smarter, not harder.
LESSON 4: FAITH IN HUMANITY:  This lesson discussed how we should keep to our word.  If we say we are going to do something we follow through.
 ( You can read all these in my blog)

Which brings us to the last of these lessons. Whose Laughing at You?  The answer to that question should be yourself. Because if you can not laugh at yourself, then who can.  Through all the trials and tribulations that us as a family has endured, I have learned the most valuable lesson from my Father.  If you can not see the humor in things your doomed.   

My Father had two laughs.  One was something was funny and made him laugh and the other was he was up to no good.  As kids he would start water fights with us in the house.(My Mother did not approve) He would start WWF (WWE for those who are younger) Wrestling with all of us kids.  We purchased him a paint ball gun for Christmas one year and he decided to tag everything in the yard including my mothers lawn statues. It was a winter pink mess.  He would leave a cup of water on the top of the door sill leaving the door open slightly and when you opened it the water would fall on your head. He was constantly joking around and keeping things humorous in the house.  I think he learned it from his mother my Grandma Bevilhymer.  She was quite the prankster as well.  She would start food fights for no reason and go on the slip n slide with us.  I remember one time we were leaving my grandparents house.  I was fairly young and we said goodbye to our Grandpa.  We couldn't find my Grandma to say goodbye too.  So we decided to leave.  When we left we walked out on the front porch and proceeded to get hit with 5 gallons of water.  My Grandma was standing on the roof with a 5 gallon bucket of water waiting for us to leave.  She dumped it on most of us and said "Bye Love You."

I learned humor early on as a kid and I am quite the funny person if you are around me long enough. I think with this lesson I was able to cope a little better with all the things that have been thrown my way. I remember when I first had my leg amputated.  It was difficult for some people to handle.  They would act like I had a terminal illness and this was it.  From day one of the amputation I have done nothing but find the humor in it.  I made a choice to have it done so now I am stuck with whatever challenges it has in store for me. I mess with people all the time when it comes to my leg.  It was a couple weeks after my amputation and several of my friends were going to go Lagoon.  I was bored out of my skull and I wanted to go.  I still had stitches and the cast on.  I ended up going. We went on every ride and even did the 150ft sky drop.  We were getting ready to go and it was late.  They wanted to go on the Haunted Castle ride.  So after the ride was over one of my friends was going to get my wheelchair. ( I did not have my prosthetic at the time) I got off the ride and instead of waiting for my friend to get the wheelchair. I had a brilliant idea to hop to the wheelchair.  As I did this I caught my sandal on crack in the ground and tripped.  When I tripped I landed on my stump full force.  Every imaginable pain sensation was going through my body.  Lagoon did not know what to do with me so they got one of their stretcher things and took me to their medic area.  My stump just hurt and I had cut open the other leg by falling.  The medic from Lagoon came to me with a serious look on his face, he was carrying a clip board.  He started to write down some stuff and then he looked at me said what exactly happened.  I said in the most serious voice possible... I was riding the Samurai and my leg fell off.  Can you help me find it?  He had wrote down the whole thing.  We ended up telling him what happened, but it was a crappy situation that we were able to look back and laugh.

So as I wrap up this lesson thing.  Don't take life so serious...We only have one of these lives so have fun with it.  If you truly look back on some of the most happiest times of your life... What were you doing?  Probably laughing at one point or another.






** Stay tuned next weeks blog is called: Too FACE PLANT or FACE PALM that is the question...
www.hopeabevilhymer.com