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So last weekend I did something new. I made homemade pickles. Yum, right?

Well, let’s just see about that.

Photo 1: boy takes (very small) bite of pickle.

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Photo 2, 3 and 4:  Boy responds to small bite of pickle.

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Uh…yep…they were THAT bad. Seriously. Awful. Pickles.

So, we’ve got the pickle part of this post covered, now what about the progress? Can bad pickles and progress possibly belong in the same blog post? Well, let’s just see about that. 😉

Despite the fact that this particular batch of pickles didn’t turn out as planned…progress was made on the pickle-making front. See by diving into something totally new, the kids and I discovered that making pickles is loads of fun. Even though the pickles were seriously awful pickles, we enjoyed the pickle-making process immensely. We discovered something new we enjoy doing together and that’s progress in my book any day of the week.

Even more, we discovered a specific pickle recipe *not* to use. And this is a step in the direction of a good batch of pickles. See I will make pickles again, but I won’t use the same recipe. I’ll probably do a bit more research and find out if others have had success making pickles using a different recipe.

Seems obvious, right? I tried something. Discovered that the results weren’t as expected. So I’m going to try something different next time around. Now before you go and call me a rocket scientist (or wonder why I’m wasting your time and mine blogging about this) let me ask you this: have you ever tried something, created results that fell short of your expectations, and then tried the exact same process again the next time hoping for different results?

If so…join the club. We all do this. When it’s something like making pickles it’s very easy to figure out that we need a different recipe. We need to do something different the next time around, or else we’ll just get another batch of seriously awful pickles.

But what if I were blogging about something more important than pickles? What if I were blogging about something that feels like a high-stakes activity—something where a person’s sense of self-worth seems to be at stake? What if I were talking about a “failed” attempt to get more organized or lose weight or quit smoking or make some other life change that seems more important than a seriously awful batch of pickles?

Would it be so easy to recognize that the *recipe* was the problem? Or would you try to use the same recipe (organizing process, weight-loss plan, smoking cessation program) and hope for different pickles (outcomes) only to get frustrated with the pickle-maker in the process? It doesn’t make much sense, does it? And yet this is so often what we do.

When you want different results, you have to do something different—use a different recipe in the case of pickle making, or try a different approach to getting organized, losing weight or quitting smoking.

Heaven knows I can’t help with the pickle making (the proof is in the pickles, I mean the pictures above.) But if you truly in your heart-of-hearts want to get more organized…why not try a different recipe? I can help you with that and I would absolutely love to help you. Let me share my recipe for organizing success with you.

Download Organizing 101…and soon you’ll be tasting the sweet taste of organizing success. (I’ll still be searching for a yummy pickle recipe…so if you can help me out with that, I’d love to hear from you!)