Maddox has never been afraid to get dirty.
And even though she comes inside filthy, and has a little dirt mustache half the time… some of my new favorite scenes in the movie that is Maddox are going to be that carefree dirt-smeared smile on her face as she runs back and forth in the backyard, that red hair streaming behind her, throwing fistfuls of dirt ahead of her so she can run through it.
Today in the school of Maddox, we are going to learn how to get dirty.
As grown-ups, we have become afraid to get dirty, both literally and figuratively. I have next-to-no desire to get in the mud with Maddox, and I don’t love the feeling of dirt on my hands.
And when it comes to the figurative expression of “getting dirty” I do not mean playing against the rules, cutthroat tactics or playing dirty. I mean just like, doing the work. Doing something we know we aren’t likely to execute perfectly the first time around.
Here’s how to get dirty like a 3-year-old:
Find the joy in jumping in.
Kids love to leap into mud puddles. They almost cannot resist it. They have no care about the splatter of mud they’ll get on their nice pants, they aren’t afraid of the squishy water they’re going to feel between the toes afterwards, they just see that mud puddle and they leap into it.
Because the joy of the splash is worth the tradeoff.
If we can focus more on the joy of the splash, we might be less hesitant to leap into the mud puddle.
Enlist others in your mess-making
Maddox’s love of dirt is so contagious, she gets her brother and sister involved. And even though they are more hesitant at first, by the end of it I have just as much of a hard time pulling them out of the mess as I do with their sister. By encouraging others to join in the fun of getting a little dirty, Maddox gets more out of it and so do her siblings.
In our lives, what could this look like? It could look like asking a friend or your spouse to join you for that dance class or do that online learning program. Right now, I’ve got a business bestie who I went to Rise Business with. I would probably NOT have done that on my own, but I’m so glad that I did.
Learn to LOVE the clean-up
The other night, I was commiserating with Zeb about how dirty our kids are getting every day, and I said, “It’s a good thing Maddox likes bath time.”
Maddox loves bath time. And I think part of why we as grown-ups are worried about getting “figuratively” dirty is because we are afraid of the clean up. We build up the clean-up so much that we don’t even bother getting dirty. We spend so much time devising plans to avoid making a mess, that we don’t get start for fear of it.
What could “baths” look like in our adult lives?
Always do a post-mortem whenever you try something new in your business. What worked. What didn’t. By having this as part of your process, you minimize the risk of trying something new because you know you have time set aside to learn from it, even if it doesn’t work the way you anticipate.
Take pleasure in the simple act of putting things back together. If “getting dirty” in your life involves an actual mess, put on your favorite song and make it a dance party.
And if you have a team, or if you have followed step 2 and enlisted others in your getting mess-making, then trust them to clean up their own mess too. In my past life as a boss of a team, I have really struggled with giving other people permission to make a mess because I’ve felt like I need to be the one to clean it up. But that’s where a lot of the learning really comes from – in being empowered to not only make a mess but being trusted to clean it up.
Summing it up for ya:
I think NOW more than ever, this lesson is important because here’s the deal: we are living in a new era. There has never been a time more upended or unsettling as this. We are having to get dirty every single day in order to survive! Why not use the opportunity to thrive? Try new things, take joy in leaping into the mud puddle. Enlist others in your mess-making by encouraging others to join in your experiments, and imagine a different way of problem-solving together! And find ways to make the clean-up process just as enjoyable as getting dirty in the first place.