Choosing Your Next Direction with Clarity

I'm always waiting for my life to improve, and I don't mean that I'm just doing nothing. There's a time for doing things and a time for doing nothing except waiting. But when I see the signs, I am immediately ready to jump into action and do everything that I need to do.

But between those times are the moments when I just have to wait. During these times, it's important for me to be very, very patient because I can spend a long time in the waiting room. Overall, in the last ten years, my life has steadily improved, and I can see that by comparing my situations then and now.

I always divide my life into three parts: my family, my job, and everything else. Each part follows different rules and behaves differently. When there is a change in my life, it only happens in one area at a time.

All the areas can't change simultaneously. I need to assess what is possible and what isn't possible to determine the state of that particular part of my life. And there are things that I wish, and have wished, I could do, like taking my kids to the beach.

But there was a time when I couldn't do that, and I just had to accept that the "Family" part of my life wasn't at the level where I could do that yet. I'm even talking about the very small things in my life. There was a time when I couldn't have a certain food that I wanted, and then a change happened, and I could get it.

If someone looked from the outside, it would seem like such a small thing, but to me, it was important, and I had to be patient while I couldn't have it. When I finally got it, I could see that that part of my life had changed and improved. These small signs are important to me because if I'm hoping for something bigger, I can think that if I can't have this little thing, then it's definitely not the right time to have this bigger thing yet.

Then there are times when everything seems to be going well, but suddenly it feels like someone has pressed the reset button on my life. Something disappointing happens, and I feel like all the progress I've made has been erased. I feel let down by my life, and I wonder if my life has really changed.

Disappointment is a very strong feeling that repeats in my life. Even when I think I've moved away from the point where I could feel so low, something happens and I get dragged back into it. During these times, I feel betrayed.

My life was going so well, and everything was falling into place. I believed that good things could happen for me, and that I could make that final change in my life that would prevent it from going back to the way it was before. On many occasions, I have been so close to that point, but just before the big change, something happens, and the whole process unravels, leaving me back where I started.

This is accompanied by that familiar sickening feeling in my stomach and the crushing disappointment of another missed opportunity. Looking back at those times, I can see that those opportunities weren't right for me. If I had looked more closely, I could have seen that there was always something about them that wasn't right.

But each opportunity represented a different direction my life could have taken, and now it seems more like a list that I was exploring and crossing off as I went until I finally found the right thing for me.

Owning Your Part (Without Blame) to Find Freedom

The worst thing I can do to someone is to try to control them. Trying to control them takes away their choices and their freedom. Individual freedom is very important, and nobody wants to feel like they can't decide for themselves what to do or that they can't choose the thing that they want.

One of the places where I have to be especially careful is with my kids. They are still fairly young, so I need to tell them what to do, but I've found that there is a line that I shouldn't cross. A line where I can control them too much.

I also, of course, have to be careful when I'm talking to my wife. Sometimes what I think is advice comes across too strongly and to her seems like me telling her what to do. And when I cross this line, it's usually because of the tone that I used or my choice of words.

And of course, I experience people trying to control me as well. People try to control me all the time into doing things they want me to do that I don't want to. And this pressure can come from them using their position or status, or their relationship with me.

I used to get pulled into doing a lot of things that I didn't really want to just because I thought I should. And I would dread doing those things, and it would make me unhappy. Now my strategy for this is to not react or commit to anything at the time the person is saying it and then later to just do the thing that I want to do.

There are never any repercussions for me from using this strategy, and the result is always that I'm happier. Another thing that I used to do is to try to change situations. Usually because I know better, which is obviously not true.

And of course, this caused conflict for me with the people around me. But then I started to pick up on the signs better and to back off and stop trying to manipulate the situation to how I wanted it to be. Most of my motivation was purely selfish anyway, and I just wanted the situation to suit me and what I wanted.

But I found that letting things develop naturally and letting other people's input guide the situation brings good results for everyone. So then a lot of my trouble and conflict with people comes from me. And even though I often think that it's other people's fault, probably eighty percent of it started from me.

I'm not talking about huge problems or big arguments either; I'm talking about even the very small things, like how a conversation goes. I want everything, including my everyday interactions, to go smoothly. This requires me to be sensitive or even hypersensitive to the flow of the conversation and the motivations of the people involved.

And because I'm not fixed on a certain outcome, my input isn't too strong, and I have hopefully avoided any conflict.

See Your Experiences Differently—Grow on Purpose

When I'm in the shower or engaged in a task that doesn't demand my full concentration, I sometimes find myself dwelling on unpleasant events that occurred earlier in the day or week. Upon realizing this, I consciously choose to stop ruminating on those matters. They're already in the past, so there's no need to continue tormenting myself over them.

However, later on, I catch myself revisiting those thoughts, and I'm unsure how long I've been caught up in them. These thoughts become a recurring loop, and despite my best efforts, I can't prevent myself from falling back into that pattern. Another involuntary tendency of mine is to reflect on different periods from my past.

Occasionally, these memories are positive, but more often than not, they are less-than-pleasant experiences. They usually involve moments of embarrassment, stress, shock, or pain. Nevertheless, they hold significance in my life.

What unifies all these experiences is the presence of regret. They are situations that I regret, and while in some cases, I couldn't prevent them from occurring, I regret my actions or the choices I made within those circumstances. Reviewing these experiences is essentially a subtle way for me to replay events I have already lived through.

Repetition undeniably plays a crucial role in my life. Additionally, when I find myself trapped in this cycle of reflection, I'm able to perceive the experiences differently from how I initially saw them. Naturally, with age, I now have a broader perspective than I did ten or twenty years ago.

However, it's not just about that. Looking back, I see the situation for what it truly was and confront the unfiltered truth of my own role in it. This can be unsettling, but detached from the emotions associated with it, observing my actions objectively proves beneficial.

Another loop I find myself stuck in pertains to the future, rather than the past. These are thoughts tied to strong urges, scenarios where I envision myself saying or doing something specific to a particular person. These thoughts circulate repeatedly in my mind, and I remain trapped in the loop until I express those words or carry out the necessary action.

A Simple Test for Knowing You’re on the Right Path

Every day, from when I wake up to when I go to bed, my life is a series of choices. And each choice for me is important. What to wear, what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat, what I should say to someone, what to do in a work situation, how to spend my free time.

I make choices all day long, and I never want to make the wrong choice or make a poor choice or fail to make a choice. I want to make the right choice every time. Each choice is important because it affects me.

It could affect my body condition, my relationships, or my future. Likewise, if I do things in the wrong order or not in the best order, then it affects my life. With so many choices all day every day, it’s difficult or impossible to make the right choice and do the right thing every time.

And although I can never really know whether I’m doing the right thing until I do it, there are clues that I need to recognize to see that it’s the right thing. Recognizing the clues and what is a clue is the key for me. Doing the right thing sometimes, of course, means not doing what I want to do and doing something I don’t particularly want to do because it’s the right thing to do.

I can’t be selfish in my choices, but that doesn’t mean the result can’t still be good for me or that I can’t sometimes do the thing I want to do; it’s just that it needs to truly be the best thing to do. And that means that I need to be sensitive to which way things are going. People’s reactions, especially people close to me, are a big clue as to whether I’m doing the right thing or not.

It sometimes happens that someone says that I should do something, and when they say it, it’s like a straight punch that hits me. The truth of it really rings a bell, and I know that it’s the right thing. But just as important as choosing the right thing to do is recognizing when I should stop doing something.

If people have an abnormally strong reaction, much stronger than the situation warrants, then my alarm bells go off, and I know it’s a clue to stop doing what I’m doing. Or if something seemingly simple becomes impossible to do, then I know it’s a clue to give up. I sometimes feel as if I’m being blocked, and this can be mentally too.

I get uncharacteristically confused, and in the end, have to give up what I’m doing. This is a clue to stop. These clues are everywhere, and at first, I didn’t recognize them as clues, or I couldn’t interpret their meaning.

And that was okay because I was learning. But as I got better at picking up the clues, I could look back and see where I had gone wrong, and this helped me to get it right the next time. And there is always a next time.

My life isn’t that different every day, and situations repeat themselves all the time. So I can always find the same clues again and then make the right choices. Each choice is very important to me because it changes my life.

Reading the Quiet Moments Between Life’s Changes

Life changes from time to time, but in between these changes are long periods where things stay the same. And if you're not happy with your life or how things are going, then these periods can seem like forever. I always thought of time as not being my friend at all.

I was always racing against it, losing it, or wasting it. And there was never enough of it. But in the last ten years, I've learned to work with it more.

I still often don't feel like I've got enough time to do everything, but I'm managing it better now. In the last ten years, my life, for the most part, has been changing in a good way, and there have been some, what I would call landmark changes, mixed in with other smaller changes. But first, I want to talk about the times in between.

Because the spaces in between the changes are important to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, this time helps me get used to the changes that have happened. Although it's very difficult for me to be patient in this part of the process.

As soon as I have change for the better in one area of my life, I instantly want change in the other areas too. But that's not how change works for me. So even though I think I'm ready for more change, I've found that I do need time to settle into it and get comfortable with it.

And this could take months and, for some things, even years. This "waiting" period also helps me get ready for the next change. Some change needs to be prepared for.

So now I need to talk about the changes. There are different kinds of changes that happen in my life, and they can be put into three categories. The first and easiest kind is an opportunity for change that comes to me out of the blue, without me doing anything.

This happened to me quite a few years ago. I was in a job that I didn't like that wasn't going anywhere, and suddenly I got a call offering me a better job. I didn't even have to think about it, I just knew it was the right thing to go for.

The second type of change is change that I have planned for. But of course, you never really know if something is going to happen until you do it. My wife and I wanted to move house, but we weren't really sure if we would be able to afford it.

And there were a few moments when we thought it wasn't going to happen. But we reached a point in our preparations and decided to go for it, and we were successful. The third change is something that is not planned and just starts spontaneously, just like this YouTube channel.

I haven't had the time or the motivation to do anything new for a long time. But the idea hit me one day, and I really felt like it would be a good thing for me to do. Starting something by myself and taking the initiative to do it in order to bring about change in my life had to feel right.

If change is forced too much by my own will and desire, then it never works for me. These three kinds of change have two things in common. First of all, there is an element of risk.

They involve me taking a chance. And secondly, they involve me needing to trust that things will work out for the best.

When Pain Becomes a Signal: Change Your Response

My health, and by that, I mean my general body condition, is important to me. I want to feel fit and feel good about myself, the same as everybody does. And I’ve always done some exercise in various forms since I was a teenager.

But I did also used to smoke, until my son was born, and then I quit. But strangely, even when I smoked, I thought I was pretty healthy. I guess it’s human nature to justify doing the things we want to do, even when it is doing us harm.

Like everybody, I have some things that I would call health issues, but in the last ten years, they have definitely multiplied. I probably get headaches every week and sometimes on the same day each week. These are the headaches that medicine won’t cure, and I just have to live with the pain until I’m released from it.

Going to the restroom is another example. I definitely go to the restroom more than anyone I know. And I’d say at best what I can get from it is...

feeling uncomfortable because I need to go, being embarrassed because I need to go again, and worrying about whether I’ll have the opportunity to go again in the future. These things are a constant problem and affect my whole day because I have to navigate through some tricky situations while also trying to cope with these health issues. Another thing that has multiplied in the last ten years is the amount of pain I have.

And by that, I mean actual physical pain. I’m not talking about anything major like fractures or breaks, but bruises, cuts, and scrapes have become part of my weekly routine. It’s honestly ridiculous.

I feel like there’s a weekly quota of pain that I’m unintentionally trying to achieve every week. And it’s probably the only area of my life where I really can’t see any rhyme or reason to it. Instead of "no pain, no gain," it seems to be more like "no pain....no pain!" But however pointless it seems, I still can’t avoid it, even though I’m very careful.

There are other times, though, when the pain does feel more meaningful. And it makes me think I should stop doing what I’m doing or that I shouldn’t have done the thing that I just did. There are times when the pain is like a wake-up call to change my behavior.

I’ll give you an example. I was at home in the shower recently, and I was stressing about a problem at work, and then I dropped the showerhead on my foot. It was painful, nothing serious, but it really made me snap out of my unhealthy thoughts and think that maybe I should stop stressing and think about something else instead.

And that brings me to the next thing I wanted to talk about: stress. This period of my life has without a doubt been the busiest and most stressful. And I’ve been under a lot of pressure in every area.

But after years of this, I do feel that it has had a positive effect, in that it has made me better at prioritizing what’s important and better at decision-making. The stress always comes in waves, and each time it comes, it pushes me to the limit or even beyond the limit of what I can endure, and then it fades away. All of my health issues are like this.

There’s an element of them taking me just past what I can bear, and then finally being released from it. But the two most important things that I notice about these issues are the repetition of them and the timing of them.

Spotting Difficult People—And Protecting Your Peace

Everybody is different, and it’s impossible to get along with everybody, but I want to. I don’t want to have bad feelings between me and anybody in my life. But sometimes I do upset people and although it’s not on purpose I can’t find any way to avoid it.

So instead I just don’t take it personally. Maybe a little pain is good for them. I also find in my life that different people play different roles.

And by that I mean that there are a set number of characters and different people have filled those same roles in different times of my life. I’ll give you an example. For me there’s always that one person who gives me what I categorize as “trouble”.

If this person is in the workplace then the trouble could be them criticizing me for how I’m doing my job, or it could be them saying something like I might need to work on my day off. And often to someone else this trouble doesn’t seem very bad at all, but to me, it feels like the worst thing ever. And as my life has changed of course so have the people, but sure enough I’ll be having trouble from one specific person again and again, and then I’ll realize that they are now filling that role.

But this is the important thing for me. Identifying them is one part of it but because I know who they are I can “expect” to have trouble from them at any time and I can be ready for it. I can also react differently to them because now their role in my life has been clearly identified.

One strategy I have is to not react to what they say. As in the example earlier they might be saying that I need to do work on my day off or that something is going to happen at work that wouldn’t be good for me. But in the end it turns out that I don’t need to work or that the work thing doesn’t happen.

I used to freak out and worry about what they had said, but now this has happened so many times over the years, with the person I’ve identified as the trouble-person, that I’ve learned to not react to what they say and just trust that it’s really not going to happen. Another trend in my life that I’ve noticed is that people are often rude to me or say insensitive things seemingly without even realizing it. Or people ignore me when I say something, and it’s as if I haven’t even said a word.

How I deal with this is to, you guessed it, not react. The best thing by far for me to do is to let it go immediately, or if what I’ve said has been ignored I don’t pursue it or try to say it again. I take it as being something that I need to hear about myself or something that I shouldn’t have said.

But I’ve gotten used to people acting very strangely around me and as I said before, I just have to not take it personally. Another thing that happens which I’m never sure is good or bad is that people often share their problems with me or personal things about themselves, whether I’m close with them or not. Of course, it’s great that they can confide in me, but I will rarely give them advice.

Giving advice is dangerous. How can I possibly know what the best course of action is?

How to Wait Out Trouble Without Making It Worse

Of course, my relationships with my loved ones are different from those with the other people I know or meet. My loved ones "love me," and I behave differently with them because of that. I also spend the most time with them, so their roles in my life are "bigger." My relationships with my family have been and still are, to some extent, the area where I have a lot of my...let's call it "trouble." It's unavoidable, and each person gives me trouble differently.

It could be an argument with my wife about jobs around the house, or my kids fighting with each other and me having to get involved. And I used to just fall into these situations and only realize when I was in them that a time of trouble had started. But now I can recognize when it's starting, and I can get ready for it.

One of the most important things about these times of trouble, and how they make them different from other interactions I have, is that they all have one thing in common. They all make me feel horrible, like my whole life is off balance. When a loved one is making trouble for me, I've learned through trial and error that sometimes I need to act, and sometimes I don't.

But definitely, the worst thing I can do is to react. If I react, the situation goes into a downward spiral for me, and I end up having even more trouble. If it's one of those situations with my kids, I have sometimes found that my emotions are stronger than they should be in that situation.

I don't mean I have anger issues or anything like that, it's just that I can feel myself being disproportionately annoyed by the situation, and although I'm thinking, "Why am I reacting so strongly," I can't stop myself. But it's because I've reacted... and that was a mistake.

Sometimes I have to act, and I'll talk more about that in a second, but most of the time what I need to do is to not act at all. If it's a situation where, for example, my wife is complaining about me or another situation where I'm being criticized in some way, I just have to sit tight and wait for the trouble to finish. This includes putting aside what I'm feeling or what I want or what I want the other person to think about me.

Of course, I can't always do this, or I can hold out for a while, and then I just can't stop myself from reacting. Mistake. And so sometimes I do need to act, but it's not what you might think.

At those times, what I really need to do is to get busy doing something. But something completely unrelated. Something productive like cleaning up in the kitchen or helping one of my kids with something.

When I do this, after a certain amount of time, the trouble fades away. And I know it's gone because I can't feel that horrible feeling anymore.

How Life’s Toughest Moments Built My Real Confidence

My life was very different then, and I don’t mean my job or where I lived or what person I was. I mean that the way the world around me behaved was different, and by that, I mean the way that the world interacted with me was different. And I mean different in a bad way.

My life just wasn't going the way I wanted it to. That included the things that came from me—the things that I tried to do—but also the things that just happened to me, the things that were out of my control. And despite what I did, I was powerless to change my situation, and I felt just helpless, like a passenger watching a movie of my own life but knowing that my actions wouldn't change the storyline.

I found myself in situations that I had unwittingly started, either by accidentally saying something or by doing something that upset the people around me. And this gave me a lot of trouble when all I wanted was to get along with people and have good relationships. And in those situations, as I tried to fix things, the worse they got because the people involved wouldn't understand what I was saying, and there was no way to make things right.

Everything I said just dug the hole deeper and deeper until I just had to give up and accept that the person was going to be upset and feel hurt by me, which was the exact opposite of what I wanted. At the best of times, it is nearly impossible to change someone's mind about what they think or feel about something, but as these situations arose in my life, I could clearly see the futility of even trying. It was like they were being controlled to not see reason or think logically about what I was saying.

I would get an increasingly familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach. A horrible churning feeling, beyond shock, that would make my head feel numb. And on top of that, when I was in those situations, I also felt confused, and I couldn't think clearly at all.

I couldn't find any strategy to deal with it except to just wait until it was over. And even though I knew it was me that had triggered it, I knew that I wouldn't be able to stop it happening again in the future no matter how careful I was. And sure enough, I would say or do something again that sparked a different but all too familiar situation.

Luckily though, these situations didn't happen every day, every week, or even every month. But I dreaded them happening again, and I was always looking out for situations where they could happen. Of course, these were the extreme situations that came into my life, but as I said, the general flow of my life wasn't really positive either.

That's not to say that good things didn't happen, but the good things were just a little something to pick me up before the next thing put me down again. It was a period of my life that really built or rebuilt my character. Of course, I was still the same person, but it started a change in me.

I'm definitely thicker-skinned now and more confident. But it's not that empty confidence that a lot of people seem to have. , that confidence which is just an act that people put on to look better than they really are.

It's a deep-seated confidence right from inside here. And I can definitely deal with situations better because when stressful situations come up, and I have to make quick decisions, I am able to keep calm and think clearly, and most importantly, be more objective. And I couldn't be this person now if I hadn't gone through that difficult period of my life.