When Your Perfect Plan Pulls an “I Love Lucy”
I was getting ready for my monthly meeting with a group of high-powered women leaders - thoughtful, driven, and committed to making a positive impact in the world. Since it was the start of a new year, I wanted to kick things off with something fresh, so I went hunting for a new approach to resolutions.
As luck would have it, I caught the end of the CBS Morning Show where Adriana Diaz was interviewing James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, about how to make resolutions that actually stick. I loved the interview and immediately thought, Perfect. I’ll share this with the group on Zoom.
I even practiced sharing the video in advance. Everything worked. I was feeling very smug and technologically competent.
Then the morning of the meeting arrived.
I went to pull up the video - and it was gone. Poof. Vanished from YouTube. It had migrated to Facebook or Instagram, and suddenly my computer behaved as if Facebook were a foreign language. I could feel the panic rising. There were other videos, but none as good. Time was up. The meeting had started.
I opened the session, chatted about the holidays, ran the icebreaker, and then - for reasons I still don’t fully understand - I tried the video again. Hope? Denial? A misplaced belief in miracles?
It started… and then froze.
By CBS TelevisionUploaded by We hope at en.wikipedia - eBay itemphoto frontphoto backTransferred from en.wikipedia by SreeBot, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16472120
Thankfully, my group - my band of superhero women - jumped in, found two other videos, and we made it work. They were gracious and supportive. And yet, I was quietly spiraling.
Later, I realized I wasn’t actually upset about the tech glitch. I was upset with my perfectionism and rigidity - my attachment to that one video and my inability to laugh at myself in the moment. Where was my grace?
After a brief wallow (I’m excellent at a brief wallow), I pulled out The Fun-Framing Playbook by Bea Bincze and asked, “What would Bea do?”
Using her Fun Framing Formula, I spotted the spiral, paused, and asked myself how this might look if it were a sitcom scene.
Spot it - Catch yourself spiraling or taking something way too seriously
Pause - Breathe, name the moment
Play - Ask: What’s slightly ridiculous here? How could this be a sitcom scene?
Flip it - Reframe with humor, playfulness, or lightness
Of course, it was I Love Lucy - but a 2026 episode titled “Lucky Lucy Leads a Meeting!” Lucy insists she has the perfect video, wrestles with technology, trips over a chair, and accidentally broadcasts her grocery list instead.
Suddenly, the reframes came easily: “Superheroes can’t be bothered with Facebook!” or “Lucy Ricardo attempts modern technology. Chaos ensues.”
And if a friend had told me this story, I would have said, “Your superhero squad came to your rescue. Wonder Woman would be proud.”
What I noticed is that my first reaction to even small mistakes is often shame or embarrassment. But when I pause, breathe, and add a little playfulness, I recover faster, problem-solve more effectively, and spend far less time beating myself up.
Later that week, more things went wrong - dead headphones, an administrative snafu, family drama - and I kept practicing the reframes. I laughed more, asked for help sooner, and spent less time spiraling over things I couldn’t control.
If you want to try this yourself, treat your next small fiasco like a sitcom scene. Exaggerate it. Make it a little ridiculous. You may find that you rebound faster - and even enjoy the process a bit more.