Ice cold showers are all I have had this week; not because I’m a supreme athlete who needs to relieve muscle pain but because my boiler is on the blink. The heating engineer has made 3 visits to date and each has cost me a call out fee and a spare part.

It’s a curious process. With each visit the engineer finds ‘the problem’ and replaces the faulty part which, presumably was masked by the previous faulty part that he found first. So, I’m left wondering why he couldn’t figure out the extent of the problem the first time around and get all the parts working at once.

Then it occurred to me that we all do that, don’t we? That is, our attention is drawn to something we have said or done that wasn’t helpful or that stopped us from getting what we wanted. So, we try to understand what went wrong and with that learning we do something differently. Sounds simple enough except it isn’t. With that new insight we then become aware of another block to progress and we work on that until the block has gone.

For those of you who, like me continuously want to do and be better, this process is never-ending. We become aware of a flaw in our thinking, correct it and the output is a behaviour that has a more favourable impact. When we know better we can do better and get a better result.

So, I have regained my respect for the boiler man. He is identifying why the water is cold by a process of elimination and ironing out the superficial faults as he goes along. Of course, I have to trust my judgement that I’ve engaged an engineer who can find the root of the problem relatively quickly. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.