Do you have any regrets? We spend at times in our lives keeping a backpack of enormous guilt that we might have left something on the table. Who doesn’t want to just make some better decisions to trust their intuition and just swing for the fences? There are parts of us that we need to understand better so we aren’t so swayed or influenced to do the opposite of what we set out to do. Everyone one of us is uniquely designed and complex. I don’t try to understand or pretend that this post in anyway will solve your regrets and make you a better version of yourself. My hope it will do, is make you think and be more aware of what’s possible.
One of our biggest issues is that we make too many decisions with our emotions and irrational thoughts. We do this at any given moment instead of hitting the pause button to gain an outside perspective before choosing the road to die on. The first secret is patience. This world doesn’t have a lot of it for anything. It’s a skill that we didn’t really pay attention to or need 20+ years ago. With our direct connection to information and all that bias out there telling us what we should do instead of thinking for ourselves what we should do, patience is exactly the skill we need too master.
Who wants to be labeled a narcissist? I got some bad news for us, we all have this tendency in all of us to be narcissistic. There is a healthy level of narcissism and unhealthy level. We judge by appearances everyday, sometimes spontaneously with out even a thought. We can balance this tendency of health narcissism with empathy. This will connect you to the person and be less focused on what you see just on the outside. Healthy narcissism can be what we need to not leave anything on the table and give us the confidence to move forward with the right intel. Creating a sense of self that you can be okay with will bolster your self-esteem.
Another small aspect of our being and moving forward is we all exhibit some tendencies in short-sidedness. If we ever hope to optimize and be at our best we can not ignore this fact. The big picture is our guide and living in short-sidedness for to long will enable regrets to live or take root. Taking that step back and being able to drone it from a high level once in a while is a completely healthy thing to do. The added bonus when you do this is that you may identify early signs of being down this road before and unlock the struggle sooner. Sometimes the very act of doing absolutely nothing can be a gift.
Self-sabotage is real. We get here the fastest when we let a negative attitude consume us. That very visual “doomed to fail” feeling you get when we spend too much time in the dark spaces of our psyche. Before too long we’ve entombed ourselves in defeat and failure. Great news we can stop ourselves from going there. Just like outward empathy for others is a great way to ensure narcissism doesn’t get the best of us, internal self-empathy can help us keep a positive mindset about the challenges ahead. We have to be able to let go of negative emotions by acknowledging that we have them. Facing them and bringing them into the light will allow us to then apply some positive strategies to overcome them.
I’m really looking forward to this month of December and the last month of 2018. I will exit this year with any regrets. I’ve decided to bring what I did in November of 2017 with a post everyday to December. Some posts will be quick and short. Some will be a little like this one where I go deeper. My goal is to not leave any ideas I’ve had for a post on the table before I move into 2019. I hope you’ll join me each day for the journey.
✌🏻 Shawn
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