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.

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.

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.