Two weeks ago I my enthusiastic hand-talking resulted in a lidless water bottle toppling its contents all over my laptop. Several tabs, documents and emails were opened when the catastrophe ensued and the screen went very black very quickly. All that was not saved was lost and my plan for the afternoon was shattered. Things were very hard for a few hours and difficult for the weekend. Following a few days of forced professional behaviour change my work and life were put in perspective in amazing, kinda zenful ways. Here are five mindfulness lessons I learned from spilling water on my laptop.

People are awesome

Seconds after “the incident” my boss and two colleagues (all in the room when it happened) leaped into action. They brought towels, consoling and solid advice for fixing the problem to the situation immediately. Nobody said anything like “I know it’s almost five on Friday, but you really need to find a computer and figure out a way to send those emails” or “hey, hand-talker, you’re an idiot”. My colleagues were supportive, caring and helped me accept the really silly thing that I did for what it was: a small failure that I needed to accept. I was – and still am – grateful for how my colleagues handled the situation and gratitude is a key building block of mindfulness.

Let it be

Letting things go is hard because, well, things are often there. My laptop, for example, sat there in a bin of rice for 48 hours as I tried to dry life back into it. In order to accept what happened I needed to let things be – my best professional friend laptop had been damaged and it would either recover or it wouldn’t and there wasn’t much more that I could do to influence an outcome. Fulfillment Daily’s Carolyn Gregoire argues that creative growth occurs alongside difficult situations, not instead of them. Events, after all, aren’t stressful; how we interpret them is what causes stress (or doesn’t). So, I accepted the world for what it was and doing so was relaxing. Calming, even.

Embrace thinking time

I am addicted to distraction. And I love the distraction of work because I love my job, love responding to things right away, and love being an instrument of service for my colleagues and Vancity’s members. Without a corporate laptop that made working at home easier, I felt frustrated by my personal tools and, consequently, didn’t tackle a lot of email or document-writing from home. Instead, I thought about work, about problems, about people, about ideas, and about cool things I learned from books and podcasts. Carving out time to think is essential for us to achieve our version of success.

Love play time

Without an easy excuse to bring work home, I had more time to play. With friends, sure, and also with my son, who is almost two years old. I’m a pretty fun guy and even I had to reflect on how much easier it is for kids to become immersed in the joy of play than it is for us adults. Elisha Goldstein and Stefanie Goldstein have some fantastic tips for achieving mindfulness through play.

Focus on what matters

Without the possibility of bringing home my laptop, I had to make more difficult choices about what I focused on when I was at work.  For example, I really like responding quickly to emails, but such behaviour changes because of the priority that I put on meetings, collaboratively writing documents, and other examples of “people time” at work. I expected more of myself in every 60-minute burst of productivity, too, because I didn’t have the little voice in my head saying, “don’t worry, if you can’t finish it now, well, just do it tonight at home.”

This article was originally published on March 9, 2016.

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