When I was in elementary school and high school my dad and I would strip the entire gym floor, repaint it and varnish it every single year.

It was a point of pride for my dad that the floor had a good design and was clean and well kept.

The first summer I helped I learned the hard way about what my dad’s expectations were for this project.

The lines on a basketball court need to be straight for obvious reasons.

The free throw line and three point line can’t be the wrong distance and the out of bounds line can’t be crooked.

This means you have to tape the lines and make sure all the lines are straight and the right angles are ACTUALLY right angles.

I didn’t want to go through the tedious process of taping the lines, measuring and rechecking to ensure it was correct.

I decided I could “eye-ball’ it . Lets just say that if you only judged me by the straightness of the lines you would think i was blind or cross eyed.

My dad wasn’t super happy.

Needless to say I had to redo it.

As I was retaping he hit me with something that is a family motto at this point.

“You’re either stupid or you don’t give a shit, and I can only help you with one.”

Some people think that’s harsh.  I’m ok with it.  Stupid doesn’t mean dumb, it means ignorant.

He said that because he told me what I needed to do, but I thought I was smarter or could use a short cut.

What he was trying to tell me was that I either:

1) Didn’t really care how well the job was done

or

2) I was just unwilling to take direction or learn

He was willing to teach me, but only if I was willing to learn or seek knowledge.

I have reflected on this at numerous times in my life when I was guilty of one, the other or both.

This is something we all go through when it comes to health and wellness.

We want to believe what we want to believe.

How many times have we tried the same diet, or fitness regime?

How many times have we said “this time I’ll make it work”?

How many times have we declined help from others who are smarter than us out of pride?

What if we just acknowledge that we either:

a) Don’t really care as much about that thing as we say we do

or 

b) Just don’t know what we are doing.

This is important for us to prioritize and acknowledge the things we want to achieve.

The toughest part about this whole thing is that it requires humility.

The humility to admit we don’t know or don’t care.

Once we do that we can move forward.

Fern