Decisions

Well in life you have to take them. Decisions. They are not always easy.

The first thing you need to learn is that you always have a choice. You might be afraid of the consequences, but you always have a choice.

You should start by ordering things in your head, by their importance.

What IS the most important thing? What really constitutes the purpose of your life?

To feel good about myself, to be happy. Yet, priority should go to long time well-being, rather than short time well being.

There needs to be a clear goal. Then you must build a plan to reach that goal.

Therefore any situations that do not promote this goal in the long run, even if they provide a short "good feeling" boost, are to be avoided. That is not to say do not pursue issues where you do not yet know whether you will be happy or not. Just make sure you keep an open mind about it, and do not take your eyes from your goal.

If in the short term you are not happy, and are in a situation where you are at an impasse, but you repeat the action just for the sake of its familiarity and the short bursts of happiness you get, you should stop and reconsider it. Do you see yourself doing that again and again? What are the long term effects? Is it still going where you are supposed to go?

Examples vary.

Global "economics", a term whose original meaning has been lost, that value a short-term world-view, create a repeated raping of the planet and its inhabitants for the sake of money instead of social happiness, equilibrium and sustainability.

Or the case of my recent break up, where my constant nagging, the constant pressure and the fact that I gave a feeling of dependency (although to be fare I was dependent) and of a non enjoyment in order to get her attention, instead of nurturing, being independent yet close sentimental and appreciate everything I had.

In both cases you might become fatalist. That has been my general tendency all my life. That of a fatalistic approach, we cannot influence the world blah blah blah.

It is never too late. All you need is introspection, a clear goal, adaptability and determination. What is the worst you can get? Be sad? Fail? Continuing that situation would be even worse. At least you will have tried, and be ok with yourself. You will not have stayed on the fence, wasting your time regretting inaction through fear. That is not happiness, not short term, neither long term.

That said, it is easy to refall in habbit. Inaction is easier. So steel yourselves.

Are you still with me?

Good.

You ask how do you change? Usually change needs a shock. A kick-starter. A realisation. Many will go the fatalist ways again and say hey that, was final. It is over. I realised it but I cannot change. Well that is no realisation. You need to realise that things were NOT going well. There is a huge difference between understanding on a principle that something is harmful, and knowing, feeling it completely and accepting it.

As long as you do not realise that, you can do nothing. Realisation might take time. It cannot be forced. But once you push open the door of realisation, you need to keep pushing, not shying away. I shied away yesterday. That was the last time.

Then you set your goals straight.

We look at those things from my current perspective.

What do I want out of my life? I want to be happy. I also want to improve the world around me. I also want to be with Danae.

Ok how do I do that?

First: re-evaluate myself. I am smart, beautiful, funny, stressed, loving, trusting, not very self-confident, egocentric, have some really great friends, an infinite amount of interests and an opportunity to improve myself.

From this list I find three things I want to eliminate. Stressed, egocentric, and not very-self confident. I also

How to do that?

Stress: Face your anxiety. Canalize it into creative things.
Ego-centric: Start helping out the less fortunate, through action. Will be joining an association sometime this week.
Self-confidence: Again, help other people, not only understand, but realise that I am well off, come to terms with it (do not have guilt because you are well and others are not).

These tie in with making the world a better place. Creativity, and helping out, as well as taking action in field of political interest I believe in but was to apathetic to do anything about. (By the way check out the links above and to the left).

Ok then what about being with Danae?

What was the problem? Distance was not the problem. Distance exacerbates the problem, it does not create it. I had solutions to the distance. To quote from the previous lines:

" The case of my recent break up, where my constant nagging, the constant pressure and the fact that I gave a feeling of dependency (although to be fare I was dependent) and of a non enjoyment in order to get her attention, instead of nurturing, being independent yet close sentimental and appreciate everything I had."

Ok. First we need to remove the things that were the problem. Nagging, pressure and dependency. These are being taken care.

Once these pathogens are removed, we need to let the system cool down. I need to be sure I have removed the pathogens that are part of my previous behaviour. She needs to forget and heal from the ordeal.

Taking time might seem as inaction, but it is not. What you are really doing is working to remove your problems. You still hang around in the background. Discretely. And work things out with yourself.

Then you will see if you can nurture things back. If you cannot, at least you tried, and cleaned yourself of your problems. You will be happy. And if you can? You will be happy.

It is a win-win situation.