Success Is Only One Paperplane Instruction Manual Away

Growing up, I was never able to make a paper airplane that actually worked. 

No matter what I did, how I folded it, what kind of paper I used – it didn’t matter. I could never manage to create an airplane that could fly. As a parent, I accepted that fact and was perfectly okay with it since that was more of a Dad’s Department kind of thing, anyway.

But one day, while out shopping, I found a really cool book, ‘The Book of Awesome Paper Airplanes’ that I just had to buy for my five-year-old son (okay, for me, too).  He loves planes and I knew he would love using all of the colorful paper that came with the book (okay, I’d love it).  So I brought it home to surprise him. 

Of course, he jumped for joy for about ten seconds straight – then after flipping through the pages, he paused on one and asked,

“Hey, Mom, can you make this one for me. Please…?”

Yep, I hadn’t really thought that one through. I couldn’t expect a five-year-old to do anything with that book. Both my husband and my oldest son were the skilled paper plane crafters, but neither of them were any where to be found.

Five-year-olds are impatient; waiting until one of them returned was out of the question.  So, I had to dive in.

At first, I was totally confused.

I thought he had picked the most difficult one in the book. There were three levels, the third was the most difficult.  I looked crossed-eyed at the page, only to discover that the plane he’d chosen was only a level-one project.

So, I rolled up my sleeves, pulled out the paper,

and took it step… by… step…

Before I knew it, the paper was beginning to look like something I recognized.  I continued to fold… and fold, following the instructions completely until it was all done.

I had finally made something that resembled the photo in the book, but I was shaking in my boots…

Could it fly?

Or would it smack and crash into the floor?  My son would be so disappointed, he’d run away from home and tell everyone how horribly his mother sucked… oh my…

“Fly it, Mom! Fly it!”

His excitement broke me from an awful bout of self-doubt and encouraged me to give it a try. 

The pressure was on.  With sweaty palms, I aimed and…

it flew – it really flew!

Okay, I realize making a paper airplane fly is not the greatest of achievements, but here’s the thing -

up until that point my attempts always failed. 

Before that moment, I’d never even bothered to find out exactly how to make a paper plane, I’d just blindly make some folds and then expected it to work – it never did.

Following the instructions and taking it step by step made all the difference in the world. 

It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you do that.

I’m no genius, but I’ve completed seemingly impossible tasks that I’d never done before solely by following the instructions.

I’ve built furniture for my home, learned to bake, and even learned how to do design blogs – all by following step by step instructions – pretty amazing stuff!

Yet, I’ve discovered that there are so many people who skip the instruction-reading phase and just dive right in head first, only to discover that if they’d only read the instructions, they could’ve avoided expensive mistakes.

So what does all this mean?

What is the significance for you and for me?

Tell us about that one special time you followed the instructions to the letter, in your life, …. and guess what? You didn’t ‘smack and crash into the ground’!

Your paper plane flew!

My thanks to Kiesha Easley from WeBlogBetter for this inspiring Guest Post today.

http://weblogbetter.com/

Tagged as: achievements, difficult, impossible, self-doubt