Nov 14, 20196 min read

Ep 148: Creating and packing a NO FAIL /SUCCESS kit

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Yes, I do believe it'ss possible to put together a kit, a success box, whatever you want to call it, that will guarantee you have succeeded in achieving a particular objective. Now, will any and all objectives qualify? Maybe not, but I guarantee if you get super specific about what it is you're trying to accomplish, it'll work. My girls helped me understand that I needed a success kit, and I could save myself some headache if I carried it around it my car. It is possible for us to put ourselves in no-fail situations!

In this episode, we'll talk about...

How to define and be specific about the objectives you're trying to achieve
What goes into a success/no-fail kit
What challenges you may face in preparing for 100% success

It was Sunday morning and the girls had been working on a praise dance. If you're not familiar with the praise dance, you can call it an interpretive dance that you do to gospel music. And so the girls have been working on that for youth Sunday and today was the day that they were supposed to perform. The girls got up and made sure they all were dressed in their black cause all the little girls were going to wear black that day and they were going to have these ribbon, these rainbow-colored ribbon flags that they were going to wave and dance to the song "Take me to the King." So we get up, we get dressed and usually on Sunday morning I am big on independence. Yes. Even though my children are only ten, eight and five, I'm very big on just having them get dressed independently and providing them as little help as possible but just checking in at the important parts. You wash under your arms, did you wash in the right areas, all of that good stuff.

But what often happens is as they get dressed and as I've sort of monitored in and out during bathroom time when it's time to go, my husband will usually send them down for breakfast and one of us would have already had breakfast on the table. So they just go down there and they get it done. And usually I go and I'm upstairs and I'm trying to finish getting dressed. So at some point in time, I'm going to yell down to the girls, "Okay, time to get your coats on. Let's move out the door" and oftentimes it's head out to the car.

So that'll give me like maybe five extra minutes to finish off things in the house. Then I will just walk out to the car and voila! they will be there, get in and move along. So this particular day they got dressed, everybody was in the car ready to go. I had gotten out to the car asked my usual questions to everyone, 'Does everybody have their seatbelt on?" Do a quick check in the back seat. Everybody's buckled up. Fantastic. And so proceed to take off. My husband took a different car and so as I took off and got there to the church, everything was great. I'm feeling good. We're on time for church or at least, I don't know, maybe five minutes behind. And so we get into the building and into the back area. That's where we first walk in and everybody just sort of gathered themselves together before we actually walk into the sanctuary. We get back there, everybody starts taking their coat off. I'm looking at faces, I'm putting lotion on faces, making sure hair's in the right place and you know, fixing locks and all this other stuff. And I look down as Lorianne has taken her coat off and what do I notice? Lorianne while she's dressed in our all black and she has one black sock on, she has one blue sock on and not like a Navy blue sock that you can hide and get away with. But it is a bright blue sock. And at that moment I say,

"Oh my goodness! Lorianne, what happened? Why don't you have black socks on? You're about to go and perform in the sanctuary. What is going on?"

"Well mom, this was all that I could find. I couldn't find another black side. I can only find the blue one."

And I was like, "Oh my gosh." I felt like the day was partially ruined.

Now on any other day, I would have no problem with my children having mismatched socks. I'm not that anal about it. I let them be and do what they want to do and this type of thing and not really a big deal. And if it's hiding underpants, no big deal. But this particular day because they were doing a performance in front of the sanctuary and everybody was supposed to be coordinated, it really bothered me and that's when it made me think, "Okay, Candace, you really could avoid this situation in the future. You really could ensure that they always had the matching socks that they needed by just sort of carrying some extra in the car."

And that's what gave me the idea of this SUCCESS KIT or this NO-FAIL KIT. If I were to pack three pairs of matching socks at the least and have those in the car at all times, I would never have this problem. I would never have a gasp of, "Oh my gosh, my children don't have matching socks and they're in front of the sanctuary" or they're out somewhere where they need or should have matching socks. When you think about it, I had a very specific problem to solve matching socks. I had a very specific way that I could address it, with having my own kit with me in the car at all times.

Now think about that same principle applied to something that you're doing or some issue that you may have. It is possible for us to create No-fail situations, but my recommendation is that we're very specific about the situation that we're trying to solve for. So when you're saying, "Okay, how do I know I'm being very specific?" Well, I think about it this way, be very black and white and think the problem that I want to solve is fill in the blank and I can solve this problem by fill in the blank. Now with both of those blanks there, you make sure that your answer is something that you can touch. And when I say touch, don't be confused by this. When I say touch, I mean it almost metaphorically like it's something that you can really wrap your head around, that you can grasp, that you can, take and run with it, if that makes sense. So you can make sure that those things are super clear and you can put your fingers to them so much that you actually could go and prepare a solution of some sort with your hands or with your brain or whatever. Then I think that you've gotten a super-specific objective.

It is possible for us to create No-fail situations, but my recommendation is that we're very specific about the situation that we're trying to solve for. (Click to tweet)

Now when it comes to what goes into making this success kit, it really may be something that is super tangible that you can whip out and touch it. And I do recommend that it is tangible. Even if it is something that's written down on paper or something you keep in your car or something that you keep at your desk or something that you post on your wall, whatever it is, make it be something that now, not only metaphorically, but physically you can actually touch because the more you can make it real, the higher probability that one, you've got something that's super actionable and two, you have something that will give you some type of results. Something you can play with. Not just something that's floating around in your head.

So now, challenges that you may face and trying to have 100% success, I'm not going to guarantee that this success kit will work 1000% of the time. But if you're super, super specific about the problem that you're solving and you're super specific about the results, the likelihood is high that you will be able to solve it. The things that you won't be able to account for. Some of the failures that you can't do anything about our external factors beyond your control, so let's say I tried as hard as I can to make sure that the girls always had their matching socks and then I had those socks, those three pairs in my car. Yes. Let's say I solve for that situation and I made sure. Somebody walked out of the house with mismatch socks, "Hey, I had it, I had it covered." But what about the case when the sock that I needed her to have right was black and the pairs that I had were white? So there are some things that you won't necessarily be able to solve for that accommodate your situation. It's hard to be so specific that you cover every single instance, but if you're specific enough, your likelihood is high for success. So take this, take all this SOC craziness that I deal with the girls and think about this for yourself and think about what type of success kit or no fail kit you may need in your life right now, and go in and build it and take it and make it happen.