It was supposed to be a simple, two night camping trip with a really cool trio I like to call “me, myself and I” but life has a funny way of changing your plans.

It all started with a rookie mistake. One that would have Bear Grylls shaking his head. I had forgotten my sleeping bag so I had to go out of my way to go purchase one. Then the real fun started.

My battery light went on and by the time I reached the campsite, it was dead. I look under my car and see a puddle of some ugly fluid and realized that it can’t be good.

So between the stupidity of forgetting a sleeping bag and my car I really wasn’t in a good mood.

I decided to let it wait until Sunday morning and have AAA tow it and Mrs Uncle Paul pick me up. Good times!

I’m sitting there in a foul mood and knee deep in a “So what else can I think of that’s pissing me off” type of inventory when it went from bad to worse.

I get up to go get a beer (my first one of the evening mind you) and I take a really bad fall.

One of the epic “I’ve fallen and can’t get up” variety and as I lay there, flat on my face, I realize that somehow I fell out of my shoes in the process.

Note: The only thing worse than falling flat on your face and falling out of your shoes would be doing all that and accidentally crapping yourself or something. How the heck does one fall out of their shoes?

Any who, I start laughing uncontrollably because how could you not? I thought about how I once watched my Dad fall off a ladder and then roll and how I laughed at him at the time. This was several years before the “stop, drop and roll” movement by the way.

I’m not sure if I was suffering from some minor head trauma but I think I saw an image of my Dad (who has been deceased and pretty much dead since 1988) saying to me “You laughed at me because I rolled and meanwhile you’re the ahole who fell out of his shoes?”

I got up, looked around and noticed that nobody caught what happened, grabbed myself a beer and went on to have a good night.

As a precaution . . . I kept my shoes off!

Having a bad day? Falling out of your shoes might help!

Sometimes we get in a really unproductive state of mind.

We feel like life might have screwed us over.

We start with the “Why me?” stuff.

That’s when we need something to “interrupt the pattern” as Tony Robbins would say.

Something that immediately (and abruptly) changes our focus and our definition of that moment and those circumstances.

Think about your unproductive patterns and come up with something you could do or think about that would be the equivalent of your Uncle Paul falling out of his shoes to change his behavior.

Gold star if you can find a way to laugh at yourself.

Life is too short not too!

By the way, my car is already fixed. I have a new sleeping bag and I was quite shocked to learn that life goes on 🙂

Cheers!