I was perusing my Facebook feed earlier today and came across a blog post from a Facebook friend. He’s your typical Facebook friend, you meet them once, connect on Facebook, and that’s the extent of your friendship. Regardless, his blog post stuck with me. He’s a journalist by trade so maybe his way with words intrigued me, especially because I coble together posts like a writer would a balance sheet (I am an accountant, so numbers are more my thing). The title was Life Lessons from a Great Blue Heron. It drew me in; I’m an outdoorsman, this title spoke to me. The context fit quite well with some recent experiences, particularly the second lesson he brings up “don’t let past successes keep you from trying to learn.”

His post was about a fishing trip he had recently taken. I immediately applied his lesson to a fishing trip I had recently been on as well. I was on my annual bass fishing trip with a good friend of mine and we had fished “our spot” all weekend. We covered every inch of the specific structure we like to fish over the course of 8 hours on the lake (not consecutive, we took a couple brakes throughout the day). It has always produced a significant number of bass for us and always one or two big ones for that lake. By the end of the day Saturday we had landed 8 fish, 7 large mouth (one good sized one) and 1 northern. We were happy, not ecstatic, but pleased with the day. We hit the same spot early the next morning. Three hours produced two fish and they were early. We needed a change. We talked about it for a little while, contemplated where we’d seen other boats, fish jumping, eagles diving, anything to come up with a new place. We were really stuck in our heads that the structure we’ve always fished was the best place to be. We decided to take a slow pass over some places we’d seen fish jumping. They didn’t hold the structure we were hoping for so we kept looking. We settled on a nice drop off with a solid weed line in the shallows, a lot of weeds. Not the area we would normally fish, actually we’d never seen anyone fishing this area. Within an hour my friend had landed two bass, one of them the biggest of the weekend.

After realizing I’d lived his lesson before reading it, I began thinking of other recent experiences that fall within that realm. Not surprisingly they’re Layton related, two of them this week. We’ve been dealing with some separation anxiety issues with Layton around bedtime. This is a new thing, within the last few weeks. Normally bedtime is good, we have a solid routine, but he’s been waking up in the middle of the nights screaming for momma and daddy. It’s not night terrors, we’ve talked with the doctor and explained the circumstances. Separation anxiety is quite common for his age. This past Monday night I was tired of the middle of the night wake-up call so I decided to talk with him before bedtime; we would read books, I would lay him down in bed, and then I would go to bed in my room across the hall. This did not sit well with him and we ended up making a routine bedtime last 2 hours. Mental note, sometimes the path to success should be repeated, not changed. We’ll stick with the normal bedtime routine and I won’t have anymore talks with him about sleeping through the night; at least not at this point in his life.

Fast forward two nights to Wednesday night/Thursday morning and we’re up at 2 am again. When it comes to the middle of the night wake-up call I’m not a pleasant person, my wife is the consoler and I’m the “GET BACK IN YOUR BED, LAY DOWN, and GO TO SLEEP!” person. Neither of our efforts had been fruitful over the past week and we’d resorted to letting him cry himself back to sleep. Wednesday night, for whatever reason, I changed my tactic. Aggression was not the historical answer, but it’s what I knew; however, I became the consoler early Thursday morning. He was crying in his bed, I came in and sat on the floor and gave him a hug. I talked to him for about 15 minutes, then calmly, yet directly, explained what I was going to do. He nodded in understanding. I left his room and went back to bed. It took about 20 minutes but he was back asleep without any further tears or cries for momma and daddy. I can’t tell you this is going to work again for me with future encounters, but I was happy with the outcome and very glad I changed my approach.

Whether you’re fishing, stuck wondering what to do next in life, or trying to get your child to sleep, consider casting someplace new; you won’t know what the outcome will be if you stick to the same old structure.