Le Blog

Hi,

It's been... a while. A lot has happened but also not a lot has happened. Firstly Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays for those of you not Christmas leaning. Last time I posted we were going into stage 4 lockdowns for the 'Rona, there was a lot of concerns about mental states and tethers. To be honest it is actually really hard to put into words exactly what the last five months have been like. What the experience of being in lockdown, working from home and generally trying to avoid catching the bloody virus was really like. So I don't think I'm going to wrangle trying to put anything into words.

My perspectives on things have shifted though and I'm partly contributing this to a few books read in the lead up to the events of this year. The three books in question, The Courage To Be Disliked, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F, and Man's Search For Meaning all played a part in the change to how I'll be approaching 2021 in the wake of the 'Rona.

• You can't change the past
• You can't please everyone
• You can't support everything at once
• Some people aren't worth the investment
• Everyone has something

Running through each a bit more thoroughly looks like this:

Firstly that I can't change the mistakes or decisions of the past. Any errors only serve now to better inform the decisions I make moving forward since I can only change the outcome in my head not in reality where I actually live. Taking the time to play out potential outcomes in my head first based on this experience may provide an idea of whether a decision is worth making but ultimately as the financial saying goes past performance is no reflection of the future. Living in the past means you run the risk of living your life on the outcomes you can't change driving the decision making for things you can change. You might not go for that new job because you've missed out on so many. Apply for the course you were thinking of doing because you failed the last one. Go for that house you were eyeing off because your last loan approval was rejected (hah yeah right!). Or that special someone you're just not sure about asking out because the last one turned you down.

If I can't please everyone, because it's basically impossible, why try? Work at pleasing the ones most important to you and let the rest be as they are. Their opinions of you only change you if you let them change you and that may lead to those you care about not being very pleased. So don't try and please everyone because someone will always find fault or criticize.

There are a lot of causes and movements in the world and people close to us have their own issues they're dealing with. Mentally we can all only take on so much before we are spread too thin and can't dedicate enough support to all these different causes and movements. There comes a point where one has to pick their causes based on their beliefs and while supporting a lot of causes may not necessarily fight for all of them. Picking up other people's baggage can also lead to issues if you take on so much that you start feeling like a pack horse weighed down by everyone else's problems. It's not that you shouldn't care, you just need to be careful of what and how much you care about so you don't overload yourself and become of no help to anyone, especially yourself.

Some people really just aren't worth the investment you try and put in. Since being back on Facebook I've added only 37 people. My intention is to keep that number at or below 50. These 50 people are family and friends that I'm genuinely interested in seeing and hearing what they are up to and how they are going. People I've known for a long time or people I've met only recently but have had a significant impact on my life in some way. The beauty of social media (ignoring all the shit about who runs the system and what they do with your data) is that you control who you let into your life.

And when it all boils down to it, everyone has something. Maybe they're going through a particularly busy period, a bad break up, a new relationship, busy with work, a nice holiday, moving house, lost a job, no phone credit, found a new job, no internet, or they have been sick. There's any number of reasons the person you're trying to contact can't come to the phone or is taking their time responding to your message. Don't set unrealistic expectations on people responding immediately and you won't be disappointed when they don't (or you'll be pleasantly surprised when they do).

That's going to be the 2021 onward attitude, you'll see my post early next week or maybe over the weekend on 2021 objectives. I'm looking forward to Friday's "Here's how I went with 2020's objectives" post to see just how much 2020 was rooted by ol' mate 'Rona.

Until then, Scott.