Spot the problem, skip the drama
Here’s your cleaned-up transcript — with punctuation, paragraph breaks, corrected spelling, and standard capitalization (including Spirit Mind and Material Mind), while keeping everything else word-for-word:
⸻
My material mind really had a chance to shine this week — and boy, did it love it. And the nice thing was that it was inside the space of the Spirit Mind.
So my material mind, that analytical part of me, was inside the loving space of Spirit Mind, and it was a whole different experience.
I was walking the construction site where we’re having a remodel done, and I just happened to notice this one really beautiful element on the ceiling that they had created was not in the right place. It was an interesting design element that was supposed to kind of wrap around this cement beam and cement column that we have — that we couldn’t really get around. So we decided to make it a design feature.
We put a cabinet next to it, and then we had the ceiling have a little light channel go around it, so it looks really beautiful — kind of making it into a design element instead of a design problem. And they’d done a great job of doing it. I’d actually walked by and saw it earlier and thought, “Wow, that looks great.”
But for some reason — the way my brain works, my material mind — I see patterns, and I remember the full plan of everything and the measurements and so on. And I happened to walk by and realize, “Oh, that’s supposed to be over a cabinet that hasn’t been installed yet.” So that’s going to be another couple of feet wide. And so it’s going to be in the wrong place.
That design element is going to be above the cabinet where you can’t see it. And then the whole thing’s going to look kind of strange — like there’s this column that goes up and then stops, and then there’s this weird empty space above it. It’s just in the wrong place.
So I pointed it out to the designer — happened to be there — and said, “Oh, I think you made a little mistake here.” She’s like, “No, no, that’s exactly how it goes.” And I said, “Uh, really? I think maybe I need to check the plans.” And she’s 100% convinced she’s right.
And we check the plans, and I’m looking at them, and I can see that the way I remember it is correct — and once they install that cabinet, it’s going to look funny. She looks up and down, looks up and down again, and then she finally goes, “Ah…” Kind of sighs. “You’re right.”
And she brings the contractor over — who was in charge of the build — says the same thing. She’s pointing at it. It’s all in Japanese — which made my material mind very happy, because I was able to speak Japanese as well to get my point across.
And he did the same thing. He’s like, “No, that’s right. That’s exactly how the spec was laid out. We did a good job.” And at this point, it’s all painted and finished and everything’s perfect visually — except that it’s in the wrong place.
And then he goes through the same thing: looking up, looking down, looking at the plans, then finally going, “Ah…”
I actually had a little box there that happened to be the size of the cabinet, and I could hold it up on the ceiling and kind of slide it out to where it was supposed to be, so they could see visually in 3D. I could do that in my head really easily, but I had this little model I thought would help. And that kind of brought it all together, like, “Oh yeah… we’re going to have to fix that.”
And it was just really fun for me, because my material mind — before — might have been frustrated. You know, if it’s outside the loving space of Spirit Mind, the material mind’s first thing is to look for who’s to blame, or to say, “It’s not my fault,” right?
And in this case, I had both the designer there — who designed it — and the lead contractor who was building, and both of them thought it was correct. But it turns out it was in the wrong space. Or from my material mind’s perspective, I was right. Yay! You know, material mind loves being right.
And the difference was: I didn’t even consider whose fault it was, or whether somebody did something wrong, or that I should be frustrated or angry or blaming. Like all that stuff that comes naturally when we’re not in the loving space of Spirit Mind — that wasn’t there.
Instead, I just was. I was excited that I had noticed it in time for them to make a change before all the cabinetry was installed the next week. If the cabinets had been installed, it would’ve been very difficult — maybe even impossible — to make that change. Probably would’ve had to delay the project by a week or two while they moved the cabinets back out, fixed that, then moved the cabinets back in. It would’ve taken a lot of time and extra money and so on.
So I was super happy about that.
It was really different, because before, I’ve felt that frustration — like, “Why can’t everybody do everything perfectly the first time?” Which, as I say it, obviously — it’s because they’re human. Nobody does everything perfectly the first time. And they were doing a really good job.
A couple days later, I was walking through — I was doing some tiling work myself outside — and I happened to walk through and had a little time to spare. So I was standing there imagining how the bedroom was going to look with the bed in it and so on. And I realized something else.
I was like, “Hey, there used to be an outlet on the wall there that had our internet and two plug-ins… and it’s gone.” I know we were supposed to keep that there. Now there’s no outlets on that wall at all.
So I went and talked to the contractor — he happened to be there. The designer wasn’t there this time. And same thing — they just made a mistake. So he’s like, “Oh, okay, good. We’ll get that fixed.”
Then while I was walking around, I also asked him, “What is this in the other room, this hole near the floor here? I don’t remember there being a plug here.”
And he said, “Oh, that’s a little footlight. So at night there’s these little footlights that come on.”
I was like, “Oh, okay. That sounds nice.” So I walked around and said, “So every room has a footlight?” And he’s like, “Yeah, yeah — every room has a footlight.”
So I said, “This one in the entrance — that’s a footlight?”
He goes, “No, no — that’s just a plug.”
And I was like, “Oh — that’s actually a footlight. I remember, because the original house had a footlight right there. It’s the only one we had.”
We kind of talked about it back and forth — why he was right. And I was like, “Well, no… I think maybe we need to call up the designer.”
So I called her up, and we had a little chat. And it turns out that not only had the outlet that was there been taken out, but that footlight had been accidentally changed into an outlet and needed to be changed back.
There was one more missing footlight in a different room, and there was one more missing outlet.
I decided maybe I should walk around and actually look at everything. Prior to that, I’d just been sort of noticing what comes up.
And again, the same thing — the reason I’m telling this story is not to celebrate that I found some mistakes. These are really minor things. But that being in the space of Spirit Mind, my material mind can really thrive.
It can do the pattern-matching thing that’s normal for me — find things — but there’s no frustration, there’s no blame. There’s no judgment that something was wrong.
There’s just an honest gratefulness that, “Oh wow — I noticed something in time and was able to communicate it with everybody.” And everybody happened to be there who needed to be there, or available on the phone. It all worked out perfectly — the timing — such that these things…
There was actually an electrician coming later that night to fix the one outlet when we noticed the other things. So he was able to do all the rest of the stuff at the same time. It didn’t delay the project at all. Didn’t increase costs any. And this was just beautiful.
And I was just celebrating that shared intelligence that we all have — that is so well-organized when we let it be, when there’s no frustration slowing us down or time spent or energy spent trying to figure out who to blame and be angry and frustrated.
Instead, things can move smoothly.
Of course, there are going to be mistakes on any big project that anybody does — oversights and things — but it’s okay. Totally okay.
I just wanted to share that because I was really happy to genuinely experience the benefits of the material mind being inside the space of Spirit Mind.
Really, really fun.
