This is how I feel sometimes when I’m ‘handling things well’. But I’m getting there!
“You handle things so well.”
“Nothing seems to bother you.”
“You are so calm.”
It’s funny how a quality most people perceive as effortless on your part has actually taken a lot of effort to cultivate.
In high school, I got voted ‘most laid back’ in my class. This is hilarious because back then, it was a total facade. I cared way too much and worried. A lot. Mainly about my life going well.
Over the last five years or so, I have really really really worked on actually being laid back though. And it seems to have worked.
The following are the three tenants I live my life by:
I take nothing personally.
One of my friends had a competitor design her website recently. Instead of feeling grievously hurt, I have decided to look at it from her perspective and made a list:
My competitor is less expensive. Since this competitor isn’t a good friend, my friend probably felt like she could tell them what to do more easily. My timeline would have been longer because I would have built a responsive site and those take longer.
As you see (and as I do), it wasn’t that my friend didn’t pick me. She just picked something else… which likely had very little to do with who I am or our friendship.
(P.S. Cultivating this took a LONG time but when you practice looking at situations from someone else’s point of view and making a list of reasons for their response, it makes a lot more sense. This works in business and personal life stuff.)
I take everything at face value.
I may ask you if you seem upset: Is there anything wrong?
If you say “Nope”, then I proceed like nothing is wrong. I will not press you because 1) You might have something wrong you don’t want to talk about or 2) I might have misread the situation and you are not upset at all.
People in my life who have waited for me to read into their words have I’m sure gotten frustrated when I take what they say at face value and proceed with my life. This has attracted for me the right kind of friends and has deepened relationships with my dearest family members.
Similar to taking everyone at face value, I expect everyone to take what I say at face value. No one, my fiance or otherwise, is expected to read my mind.
As an adult, I am in charge of making decisions based on my feelings and communicating those to others. If I don’t want to go to a party, I need to say so. If I can’t do a favor, I need to decline. If I want you to bring over your fabulous paella for dinner tomorrow night, I need to request it. That said…
I don’t expect anything in particular.
If you say you don’t want to bring your paella to dinner, I am not disappointed. I have no dreamed of paella with no backup plan. I have not projected my expectations for happiness onto you like that.
As stated in the first point above, you not bringing your paella is nothing personal against me. You might not have the ingredients at your house. You might not have time to cook it. You might have ate it four times last week. There are any number of potential reasons to say no and the reason doesn’t matter since the outcome is the same.
But if I don’t ask for what I want, who will ask for me? Worse case scenario is what I want can’t happen. But if I don’t put it out there to happen, there is no chance it actually will.
So when I request with no expectation and what I want happens, yipee. And when it doesn’t and I realize it is nothing personal, I can take it at face value and move on.
As you see, these three ideas feed into each other. And thinking them has taken a lot of things out of my perceived control and have made me a more empathetic person.
Like you, I’m headed into a new year and struggle with living in the moment. But I know if I keep cultivating these qualities, at least the moments I choose to live in while be relaxed ones.