In my ideal world I’ve finished my work for the day before the girls are in bed, and then I have a couple of hours for myself after they are down to read, meditate, hang out with Trish, and unwind for the day.

But on this particular day that wasn’t how it worked out. So after the girls were down, I went back to the office to finish off a couple of things. Before I started I had a quick look at the AFL (Aussie footy) website and read an interesting article about football player Max Gawn and his beard.

The article referred to NBA basketballer James Harden and his beard. I’d heard about him but don’t really track the NBA, so I jumped across to his twitter feed and saw some interesting stuff. Which of course led me to Youtube, and his highlight reel for the last year.

Wow! I gotta tell you, James Harden has got some moves. And turns out his highlight reel for the year before wasn’t too shabby either.

Suddenly an hour had disappeared, and now I was annoyed at myself. I still had the work to finish, I hadn’t meditated yet, now it was going to be a late night, et cetera et cetera.

Luckily, I’d recently had a conversation about kindness with my friend and Thought Leaders founder Matt Church. He’d shared a lesson that he’d received from one of his teachers about kindness: when someone disappoints you, be kind. I really like that. It’s easy to be kind when everything is going smoothly … if you really want to practice kindness, the time to do it is when someone disappoints you.

But then Matt shared the kicker with me. Especially when the person who disappoints you is yourself. Wow.

Can you be kind to yourself when you’ve disappointed yourself? I decided to give it a go. I forgave myself for wasting time going down the internet rabbit hole (figured I’m not Robinson Crusoe on that front), decided the work could wait until tomorrow after all, and still got to bed at a reasonable time feeling OK about myself.