I have this quote on my pinboard at work, and a colleague remarked the other day that I never change my mind, and I was a little bit shocked. I’ve always thought of myself as a flexible, adaptable person. Sure, I’m a little stubborn at times, and have certain relatively fixed ideas about things, but I never saw myself as unable to change my mind. For that matter, I’ve never gotten a tattoo because I change my mind so frequently.
And then I was chatting to the hubs last night, and the subject of people came up, and it turns out I judge. I judge people, and I decide whether or not to interact with them in the first couple of minutes from meeting them, and it’s only in extreme situations that I will reverse that judgment, and be able to look past it.
And I’ve realised that the only person I am harming in this situation
is myself.
Whether or not I make friends with someone is relatively minor, but there are large, life-altering decisions that I’ve made that I don’t keep looking at and evaluating, simply because the decision is made now. But life is a series of decisions, often the same ones made over and over again, and every so often, in order to facilitate progress, you need to change your mind and make the decision differently, or you may be cutting yourself off from opportunities and experiences that could enrich you beyond your wildest dreams.
When I was 18 or so, and had seen my parents, and the parents of so many of my friends go through horrible, painful divorces, I told myself that I would never get married. Marriage was for other people, people who were better at relationships, people who could keep their shit together. But I, I came from a family where my parents and my mom’s parents were divorced, and my dad’s parent’s would’ve been, had his dad not died relatively young. So the long-term marital relationship example was mostly missing from my life.
And yet. I was engaged at 23. So, as it turns out, I am capable of changing my mind. Of realising that I am not my parents. I am capable of keeping my shit together, and being married, and putting the work into it that it requires (although that, like so many other things, is consistently a work in progress).
And so, I feel like I need to get back to 23-year-old-me, who could evaluate choices, and make different ones from the ones I thought I had made. From what I eat to whether I work out, and who I speak to and what I do everyday, I need to make sure that the snap decisions I come to are arrived at for the right reasons, and not simply because I am unable to change my mind. And I need to decide to live life every day, to live it deliberately, and to make decisions that will enhance my life, not cut me off from experiences that would enrich.
So, maybe I over-think things. Yes, that could be true. But I will take over-thinking over not thinking about them any day, because that way, I know that what I am doing is considered, and carefully evaluated. So if I try to make friends with you, and I never have before, be kind, I’m out of my comfort zone. And if I seem like I’m changing my mind a lot, be gentle, I’m not used to this, but I’m trying it out to see what happens.
eat with a spoon 