IT'S A SIGN

I found an excellent article recently online which I thought I'd share with you this week.

It centres around how the majority of us are making things harder for ourselves than they necessarily need to be. I must admit to feeling I fitted most of the categories.

It started with a fairly common one; taking offence at something when in actual fact there was most likely none intended. An example given was of another driver on the road cutting you up, but from my own perspective I could see how I "ascribe intent", as it was headed, when a friend will make a trivial comment or observation. At times I can react as if it's a personal slap in the face, which it mostly never is (some who know me well will be nodding their heads right now!)

If you read my blog regularly you'll know I make and teach film. Another situation described one as, being the star of your own movie. You wrote the script, and therefore you know how you want it to unfold, and even end. But, like most of my writing, no one else has read the script, then when someone screws up their expected lines, or fails to do something, you feel that the movie is ruined in that instant.

Hmmm, this was becoming eerily familiar! But I'll bet I'm not alone in all this.

As I look back on my life, and some of my closest friends make observations, it is clear I am a "glass half empty" sort of person a lot of the time. Which made me fit the next paragraph in the article very easily; I fast forward everything to its worst possible outcome in my mind when a problem appears, when the actual outcome is usually better than utter disaster.

Others need very little explanation, but rang similar bells, such as, refusing to let go of things; comparing my life to others in a negative manner; having unrealistic expectations of situations or others.

I would say that over the years, on average, I have been a believer in "fate". Some things have happened in my life that cannot be explained in any other way, and I'm happy to say, against my glass half empty personality, have been rewarding moments. A close friend of mine though, dismisses fate 100%. It is, he says, like waiting for "a sign" before acting.

Well, that brings me rather neatly to the last item on the list.

Over the past year I have been contemplating making some pretty big changes. But that is as far as it has progressed to date. Contemplating. But the last paragraph in the article made me sit up and take stock, and has actually made me start the process. It's heading was; You let other people steal from you.

This wasn't in the sense of material items or money etc, but referred directly to Time. For me, time is way higher up on my priority list than money. However, for a long period of time now I have been giving away my time, mostly to people and situations that will never recognise the full extent of what I give. In fact, I can easily go as far as saying, it has raised an expectation in those people. The big changes will put pay to this.

I must apologise to my good friend, because for me, finding this article, and particularly that paragraph, was most definitely a sign.