Over the weekend, we attended a family retreat. We brought the kids’ bikes.  My four year old son was riding his bike and went down a pretty big hill.  Somehow, he ended up “kissing the tree” (as my husband called it) by plowing head first into the tree.  I wasn’t directly behind him to see what happened so my guess is he looked behind him for a quick second and lost control of his bike.  He toppled over, cried for about 3 minutes, wanted to be held, and didn’t want to ride again.  After I held him for a few minutes and assured him that everyone has accidents, he was better.  Tears were gone.  Courage was back.  The drive to conquer the hill and continue riding was there.

How many times have we hit a “tree” and given up because it scared us or made us feel like a failure?  Maybe hitting the tree came as a complete shock and we were left to regroup.  Perhaps we hit the tree so hard we were left with scrapes, bruises and wounds.  Or the tree may have even knocked the wind out of us.  Regardless of the situation, we are not exempt from life’s moments of hitting the tree, but we can choose to get up, brush ourselves off, keep going and be determined to learn from it.  

Next time you find yourself “kissing a tree”, take a step back and take in the lessons learned.  It’s okay to “kiss the tree” as long as you keep going.

~Coletta Jones Patterson

Coletta is an author, life coach, business executive and weekly blogger.  Connect with Coletta at info@moveu4ward.com.

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