Knowing When Not to Act Is a Strength

I’m always waiting for my life to improve and I don’t mean that I’m just doing nothing but 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 times that I just have to wait.

At 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 in a different way. When I have change in my life it is only ever in one of the areas at one time.

All of the areas can’t change at once. And I need to look at what is possible and what isn’t possible to gauge where that part of my life is at. And there are things that I wish, and have wished, I could do, like take my kids to the beach.

But there has been 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. And I’m even talking about the very small things in my life. There has been a time when I couldn’t have a certain food that I wanted and then a change happened and I could get it.

If you 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 and when I got it I could see that that part of my life had changed and improved. These small signs are important for 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 the times when everything seems to be going well but suddenly it will be like someone has pressed the reset button on my life.

Something will happen, something disappointing, and I’ll feel like all of the gains I’ve made have now been erased. And I feel let down by my life and I’ll wonder if my life has really changed? Disappointment is a very strong feeling that repeats in my life.

And even when I think I’ve moved away from the area where I could feel so low something happens and I get dragged back into it. At these times I feel betrayed. My life was going so well and everything was clicking into place.

I was believing that good things could happen for me and that I could make that final change in my life that means it would never be able to go back to the way it was before. And on many occasions I have been so close to that point but just before the big change something happens and then the whole process unravels and I’m back where I started. This is accompanied by that familiar sickening feeling in my stomach and the crushing disappointment of another opportunity gone by.

Looking back at those times I can see that those opportunities weren’t right for me and if I’d looked more closely I could have seen that there was always something about them that wasn’t right. But each opportunity was a different direction my life could have gone in and now it seems to me more like a list that I was exploring and crossing off as I went until I finally found the right thing for me.

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.