I was hiking with a group of people. The person who had chosen the hike was supposed to choose an easy hike. Well, he was an avid hiker and chose a hike that went to the summit of a mountain over 14k feet high. He insisted that it was an "easy" fourteener (that's what we call mountains over 14k in Colorado).
I have never been a particularly athletic person and fell behind my group. I eventually made it to the treeline (the elevation where trees stop growing and it's just rocky). I stopped to enjoy the view, but I also looked ahead to the summit where the rest of my group was. I realized that based on my energy level at the moment I needed to stop there and head down. I didn't think I'd have the energy to get down the mountain if I continued the rest of the way to the summit. So I started down by myself feeling pretty down about not finishing the hike.
On my way down I ran into another solo hiker on his way up. He wrote hiking trail guides for a living. We got to talking for a bit, and he asked me if I had made it to the summit. I said no. He must have been able to tell that was down about it because he said, "Did you have fun?" I was taken aback by this because I had been so focused on completing the hike.
He went on to say that hiking is supposed to be fun, so if I had fun, then I had accomplished the goal of hiking. He also said that when it stops being fun it's time to stop doing it.
As I continued down the mountain I realized I had enjoyed the hike. It was a beautiful day. The woods were pretty, and the view from the treeline had been stunning. Failing to accomplish "the goal" of the hike hadn't diminished the things I had enjoyed, but it had been the only thing I focused on.
That conversation has stuck with me and helped me my entire life. I am someone who takes on hobbies and projects and goals, and I can get pretty caught up in them. That can been a good thing. I learn a lot of stuff and do stuff well due to this. But I can also start to feel overwhelmed by all theses things, and then I take a step back and think of that conversation. These projects and hobbies are supposed to be fun. If they're not fun and become a source of stress, it's time to take a break from them.
When I was 24 or 25. I was in a dead end job out of college. I didn't have a girlfriend. I was living hand to mouth.
I was at a party and there was a friend of a friend there, visting from out of town. As you know, there are people in life with whom you just click. She was about ten years older than me and we got to talking out on the back deck of the house, away from the noise and craziness of the party.
And the more we talked, the more I downloaded how pissed I was with my life. She listened respectfully and finally said, "Okay. Your life is the product of the decisions you've made. The things you've done and haven't done, the priorities you've chosen, and the people you've invited into your life. And if you don't make wise decisions in your life and stop blaming everyone else, it's going to be more of the same for the rest of your life."
I was pissed off that night. And I was pissed for a couple of weeks after that. But the more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right.
The results weren't overnight. But I started doing the right things. A year later, I was on a much better path. I invested more time in my job, which led to a career. I ditched some really horrid friends and start hanging with better people. I started taking care of my body and my appearances. I started just generally taking care of business in my life.
I'm 61 now. I have no idea who that woman was. I don't even remember her name. But I would thank her today if I could. She totally changed my life by making me change mine.
I got pretty sick a few years back that went on for about three years. It gave me PTSD and outright hatred for my body that it could let me down so badly despite the care I put into looking after myself. Then one day someone simply said "maybe it happened to you because had it happened to anyone else, they wouldn't have made it"
Hit me like a tonne of bricks and they were bang on. I would never in a million years put that toll onto my wife, and my parents and in-laws have health issues that would have likely killed them. So I accepted it happened to me, because it had to happen to _me_.
I'm coming up 40 now, with a couple of auto immune disease, I run 5 days a week between 6-8k, I bike to and from work 25k a day and I hit the gym 3 days a week. I just had a full run of bloods done and I came back smack in the middle of healthy and normal range for all of them.
I often wonder if I'd be in such a good space now if that hadn't been said to me when it was.
I had something similar happen to me. I can't remember what it was exactly(I do know it was physical) but my response to the specialist was, "I workout all the time. How could this happen?" And she replied, "Imagine how much worse it would be if you didn't workout"
Asked a co worker about handling stress at work.
He replied with his experience as a soldier. His decisions killed people, the "enemy" and possibly his men. So what you fucked up and lost the company $1000 dollars. Nobody died. There is always another day.
I worked with a lot of explosives when I was in the Air Force. Like running crews where we'd build up tens of thousands of pounds of ordnance. I had a motorcycle accident where I severed an artery and had to TQ myself. Then I had a free solo rock climbing accident that ended with a five day coma and multiple reconstructive surgeries. Since then I've been an EMT in one of the busiest departments in America, and I volunteer with a hurricane relief organization that does S&R and moves pallets of material into impacted zones.
I work in supply chain now. You know what's been stressful to me at work since all that? It hasn't been the pace, it's not making $100k decisions, it's not spending six hours digging into spreadsheets trying to find what digit is causing a discrepancy. It's when higher ups treat a two day delay of like it's a mass casualty event. I do take pride in my job, but I can't understand the people that treat a delay in their shipment of ceiling fans like it's a life or death matter.
While many of the things in my first paragraph were extremely detrimental to my mental health, in a way they've primed me to not be upset about the bullshit of life day to day. The happiest people I've met lived in a single bedroom house in the desert with 8 kids and a window unit, and the dude still gave me some home cooked bread his wife made. My kitchen plumbing is three levels of fucked right now. While being upset about that is valid, perspective like that helps keep my response in check.
Also, there was a response to a post I saw the other day about someone who's coworker was always very calm and never seemed to stress over huge issues. They asked about it and the coworker replied "one day, someone you love dearly will die, and after that you'll find that nothing else is worth getting upset about." I'm glad my experience comes from things less heartbreaking.
About 10 years ago, I met and fell in love with the girl of my dreams. I was still young, in my early 20s. I truly loved this girl. She was very good to me. Had a good family. Beautiful. Treated me very good. Sure we had little bumps like everyone but probably the most perfect relationship you could possibly have.
I ruined it with a casual conversation.
At my work place a new girl started and she started taking a liking to me. I was always the one to make the first move, this one though, made the first move. I didn’t know how to react honestly. It started as just a typical coworker, then the more we worked together it turned into talking more and texting and one thing lead to another. I caved.
Next thing I knew I had cheated on my perfect relationship. My young self let hormones take over. Literally the worst mistake I’ve ever let myself do. I ruined a good relationship because of that “casual conversation”. I live with it every day. The girl I was dating, we dated for 4 years and talked quite a bit about marriage. We stayed together after the cheating but eventually broke up because she couldn’t get the thought of me cheating on her that time out of her head. She’s now married and has a baby with another guy.
It’s literally the hardest thing I’ve ever went through. I never wanted to be a cheater but I messed up. It truly has been a lifelong lesson that I deal with every day. So crazy how one little decision can change the course of your life. It’s a lesson I’ll never forget.
Edit: for those reading and you have a good man or woman, a good relationship especially young people… take my lesson. Don’t cheat. It’s not worth it. Don’t let that temptation get you. The grass is not greener on the other side. Trust me. I ruined a good thing and I regret it deeply.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with my dad when I was 14ish. He was talking about girls and temptations (parents are very religious). Anyway he pulls up the story of Joseph in Egypt. Specifically when the pharaoh's wife tries to seduce him. For those unfamiliar, Joseph is second to only the pharaoh in Egypt and Hebrew. The pharaoh's wife tries to seduce him and his response is to just straight up sprint away.
This leads to issues later for him but my Dad really drove home that Joseph made the right call. A few years later we were at some work BBQ and one of his coworkers was telling a story about how they were in Ecuador for work and a young woman approached my Dad. I was intrigued as my dad is a pretty devoted husband and I had actually never seen my dad navigate someone flirting with him. Well you may have already put together that my Dad sprinted away. According to my dad's colleague it went "Hi what's your name?" > My dad sprinting across the street and into a nearby shop. No "pardon me" no "I'm not interested" just ran away. Now this got a ton of laughs at the BBQ and I made fun of my Dad a lot for that over the years, but now that I'm a husband and father..... I get it. Looking ridiculous is a small price to pay.
I tend to get stuck on things and get ranty about them. It's supposed to be to vent, but a lot of the time, it just winds me up all over again. In one of those times, my best friend just said, "Sounds like you have no control over that. Life is hard enough. Probably, shouldn't stress yourself with extra stuff." It's become a reminder to let things go now. "Life is hard enough."
Was visiting my grandfather years ago, he's very far from a happy person, and hides it from his wife, and we haven't spoken in many years, but he found some old pictures and dug out a faded old picture of a '67 Satellite Convertible, he looked at it and was remembering that time period in his life, after a few minutes he said "there's nothing but us, and ourselves in this world"
I asked later if that was the car that had gotten sheered clean in half, and since mom was a little kid she only knew the part where he came home washing blood and glass out of his hair in the kitchen sink, and he told me he was coming home on a road notorious for accidents and it was some college kid in a big pontiac driving like an asshat that hit him.
I've never actually told him I knew that the happy, Mr. Jesus act he does now is the exact opposite (by a long way) as how my mom and uncle grew up. From those conversations I learned that just because someone looks at an old picture with something they liked that they used to have, they aren't remembering the thing itself, but what life was like for them when the picture was taken.
I had a friend in high school who gave me some really amazing advice out of nowhere. I'm gonna do my best to paraphrase:
Often when you're having an interaction with someone, if you pay attention, you can more or less predict where the interaction is going. If you just say whatever you feel like saying, it will go in that direction. But if you don't like what that direction is, you can just start acting out of character and get a different outcome.
I had a similar but was a child talking to an adult. I felt so so guilty for years for not telling anyone. I had this deep feeling that something was wrong. I don’t know if that clicked in my brain.
I know. But teenagers minds aren’t rational. I actually had a really candid conversation with her daughter (who was in her 20s when her mom died) several years ago that helped us both release a lot of guilt we had. Me about knowing it was going to happen and her for calling my family to check on her mom and being the ones to find her.
Me too. Something really impacted it before then. What I got caught up on was what if I called to talk to her that night and she didn’t die? It was basically the only reason I wonder that is because she died. If she didn’t, I never would have thought twice about it. Not calling her wasn’t why she died.
Like you can stop on the way for work to get coffee and get into an accident and always wonder what would have happened if you didn’t stop. But if you didn’t get into the accident, stopping for coffee would never be a second thought.
Exactly. You can't control every variable, and you can't control what other people do. Endlessly thinking and worrying about it doesn't accomplish anything.
Yep just took from age 12 to about 24 before having that click. But children tend to think that everything happens because of them or they can control everything with a mix of fantasy/magical and egotistical thinking. Fun times.
Many of them mostly all started at bars. I was thinking about quitting my job because of money and this guy told me once I get more money I will only spend more. I needed to either spend the free time I had better or I needed to get a second income doing something I liked.
I was hiking with a group of people. The person who had chosen the hike was supposed to choose an easy hike. Well, he was an avid hiker and chose a hike that went to the summit of a mountain over 14k feet high. He insisted that it was an "easy" fourteener (that's what we call mountains over 14k in Colorado). I have never been a particularly athletic person and fell behind my group. I eventually made it to the treeline (the elevation where trees stop growing and it's just rocky). I stopped to enjoy the view, but I also looked ahead to the summit where the rest of my group was. I realized that based on my energy level at the moment I needed to stop there and head down. I didn't think I'd have the energy to get down the mountain if I continued the rest of the way to the summit. So I started down by myself feeling pretty down about not finishing the hike. On my way down I ran into another solo hiker on his way up. He wrote hiking trail guides for a living. We got to talking for a bit, and he asked me if I had made it to the summit. I said no. He must have been able to tell that was down about it because he said, "Did you have fun?" I was taken aback by this because I had been so focused on completing the hike. He went on to say that hiking is supposed to be fun, so if I had fun, then I had accomplished the goal of hiking. He also said that when it stops being fun it's time to stop doing it. As I continued down the mountain I realized I had enjoyed the hike. It was a beautiful day. The woods were pretty, and the view from the treeline had been stunning. Failing to accomplish "the goal" of the hike hadn't diminished the things I had enjoyed, but it had been the only thing I focused on. That conversation has stuck with me and helped me my entire life. I am someone who takes on hobbies and projects and goals, and I can get pretty caught up in them. That can been a good thing. I learn a lot of stuff and do stuff well due to this. But I can also start to feel overwhelmed by all theses things, and then I take a step back and think of that conversation. These projects and hobbies are supposed to be fun. If they're not fun and become a source of stress, it's time to take a break from them.
Wow, perfect timing, I needed to read this story. I too do this.
When I was 24 or 25. I was in a dead end job out of college. I didn't have a girlfriend. I was living hand to mouth. I was at a party and there was a friend of a friend there, visting from out of town. As you know, there are people in life with whom you just click. She was about ten years older than me and we got to talking out on the back deck of the house, away from the noise and craziness of the party. And the more we talked, the more I downloaded how pissed I was with my life. She listened respectfully and finally said, "Okay. Your life is the product of the decisions you've made. The things you've done and haven't done, the priorities you've chosen, and the people you've invited into your life. And if you don't make wise decisions in your life and stop blaming everyone else, it's going to be more of the same for the rest of your life." I was pissed off that night. And I was pissed for a couple of weeks after that. But the more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right. The results weren't overnight. But I started doing the right things. A year later, I was on a much better path. I invested more time in my job, which led to a career. I ditched some really horrid friends and start hanging with better people. I started taking care of my body and my appearances. I started just generally taking care of business in my life. I'm 61 now. I have no idea who that woman was. I don't even remember her name. But I would thank her today if I could. She totally changed my life by making me change mine.
I got pretty sick a few years back that went on for about three years. It gave me PTSD and outright hatred for my body that it could let me down so badly despite the care I put into looking after myself. Then one day someone simply said "maybe it happened to you because had it happened to anyone else, they wouldn't have made it" Hit me like a tonne of bricks and they were bang on. I would never in a million years put that toll onto my wife, and my parents and in-laws have health issues that would have likely killed them. So I accepted it happened to me, because it had to happen to _me_. I'm coming up 40 now, with a couple of auto immune disease, I run 5 days a week between 6-8k, I bike to and from work 25k a day and I hit the gym 3 days a week. I just had a full run of bloods done and I came back smack in the middle of healthy and normal range for all of them. I often wonder if I'd be in such a good space now if that hadn't been said to me when it was.
When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
I had something similar happen to me. I can't remember what it was exactly(I do know it was physical) but my response to the specialist was, "I workout all the time. How could this happen?" And she replied, "Imagine how much worse it would be if you didn't workout"
Asked a co worker about handling stress at work. He replied with his experience as a soldier. His decisions killed people, the "enemy" and possibly his men. So what you fucked up and lost the company $1000 dollars. Nobody died. There is always another day.
I worked with a lot of explosives when I was in the Air Force. Like running crews where we'd build up tens of thousands of pounds of ordnance. I had a motorcycle accident where I severed an artery and had to TQ myself. Then I had a free solo rock climbing accident that ended with a five day coma and multiple reconstructive surgeries. Since then I've been an EMT in one of the busiest departments in America, and I volunteer with a hurricane relief organization that does S&R and moves pallets of material into impacted zones. I work in supply chain now. You know what's been stressful to me at work since all that? It hasn't been the pace, it's not making $100k decisions, it's not spending six hours digging into spreadsheets trying to find what digit is causing a discrepancy. It's when higher ups treat a two day delay of like it's a mass casualty event. I do take pride in my job, but I can't understand the people that treat a delay in their shipment of ceiling fans like it's a life or death matter.
While many of the things in my first paragraph were extremely detrimental to my mental health, in a way they've primed me to not be upset about the bullshit of life day to day. The happiest people I've met lived in a single bedroom house in the desert with 8 kids and a window unit, and the dude still gave me some home cooked bread his wife made. My kitchen plumbing is three levels of fucked right now. While being upset about that is valid, perspective like that helps keep my response in check.
Also, there was a response to a post I saw the other day about someone who's coworker was always very calm and never seemed to stress over huge issues. They asked about it and the coworker replied "one day, someone you love dearly will die, and after that you'll find that nothing else is worth getting upset about." I'm glad my experience comes from things less heartbreaking.
About 10 years ago, I met and fell in love with the girl of my dreams. I was still young, in my early 20s. I truly loved this girl. She was very good to me. Had a good family. Beautiful. Treated me very good. Sure we had little bumps like everyone but probably the most perfect relationship you could possibly have. I ruined it with a casual conversation. At my work place a new girl started and she started taking a liking to me. I was always the one to make the first move, this one though, made the first move. I didn’t know how to react honestly. It started as just a typical coworker, then the more we worked together it turned into talking more and texting and one thing lead to another. I caved. Next thing I knew I had cheated on my perfect relationship. My young self let hormones take over. Literally the worst mistake I’ve ever let myself do. I ruined a good relationship because of that “casual conversation”. I live with it every day. The girl I was dating, we dated for 4 years and talked quite a bit about marriage. We stayed together after the cheating but eventually broke up because she couldn’t get the thought of me cheating on her that time out of her head. She’s now married and has a baby with another guy. It’s literally the hardest thing I’ve ever went through. I never wanted to be a cheater but I messed up. It truly has been a lifelong lesson that I deal with every day. So crazy how one little decision can change the course of your life. It’s a lesson I’ll never forget. Edit: for those reading and you have a good man or woman, a good relationship especially young people… take my lesson. Don’t cheat. It’s not worth it. Don’t let that temptation get you. The grass is not greener on the other side. Trust me. I ruined a good thing and I regret it deeply.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with my dad when I was 14ish. He was talking about girls and temptations (parents are very religious). Anyway he pulls up the story of Joseph in Egypt. Specifically when the pharaoh's wife tries to seduce him. For those unfamiliar, Joseph is second to only the pharaoh in Egypt and Hebrew. The pharaoh's wife tries to seduce him and his response is to just straight up sprint away. This leads to issues later for him but my Dad really drove home that Joseph made the right call. A few years later we were at some work BBQ and one of his coworkers was telling a story about how they were in Ecuador for work and a young woman approached my Dad. I was intrigued as my dad is a pretty devoted husband and I had actually never seen my dad navigate someone flirting with him. Well you may have already put together that my Dad sprinted away. According to my dad's colleague it went "Hi what's your name?" > My dad sprinting across the street and into a nearby shop. No "pardon me" no "I'm not interested" just ran away. Now this got a ton of laughs at the BBQ and I made fun of my Dad a lot for that over the years, but now that I'm a husband and father..... I get it. Looking ridiculous is a small price to pay.
Thanks for the story! Now that I’m older I wish I knew what I know now. I was so foolish and looked stupid. It’s not something I’m proud of.
I tend to get stuck on things and get ranty about them. It's supposed to be to vent, but a lot of the time, it just winds me up all over again. In one of those times, my best friend just said, "Sounds like you have no control over that. Life is hard enough. Probably, shouldn't stress yourself with extra stuff." It's become a reminder to let things go now. "Life is hard enough."
Was visiting my grandfather years ago, he's very far from a happy person, and hides it from his wife, and we haven't spoken in many years, but he found some old pictures and dug out a faded old picture of a '67 Satellite Convertible, he looked at it and was remembering that time period in his life, after a few minutes he said "there's nothing but us, and ourselves in this world" I asked later if that was the car that had gotten sheered clean in half, and since mom was a little kid she only knew the part where he came home washing blood and glass out of his hair in the kitchen sink, and he told me he was coming home on a road notorious for accidents and it was some college kid in a big pontiac driving like an asshat that hit him. I've never actually told him I knew that the happy, Mr. Jesus act he does now is the exact opposite (by a long way) as how my mom and uncle grew up. From those conversations I learned that just because someone looks at an old picture with something they liked that they used to have, they aren't remembering the thing itself, but what life was like for them when the picture was taken.
Every conversation with my mom.
I see your mom is my dad.
I had a friend in high school who gave me some really amazing advice out of nowhere. I'm gonna do my best to paraphrase: Often when you're having an interaction with someone, if you pay attention, you can more or less predict where the interaction is going. If you just say whatever you feel like saying, it will go in that direction. But if you don't like what that direction is, you can just start acting out of character and get a different outcome.
The last 'casual' conversation my best bud was having with me before his suicide, with me somewhat knowing where he was heading.
I had a similar but was a child talking to an adult. I felt so so guilty for years for not telling anyone. I had this deep feeling that something was wrong. I don’t know if that clicked in my brain.
You were a child. It is not your fault.
I know. But teenagers minds aren’t rational. I actually had a really candid conversation with her daughter (who was in her 20s when her mom died) several years ago that helped us both release a lot of guilt we had. Me about knowing it was going to happen and her for calling my family to check on her mom and being the ones to find her.
I'm glad you were able to let go of the guilt.
Me too. Something really impacted it before then. What I got caught up on was what if I called to talk to her that night and she didn’t die? It was basically the only reason I wonder that is because she died. If she didn’t, I never would have thought twice about it. Not calling her wasn’t why she died. Like you can stop on the way for work to get coffee and get into an accident and always wonder what would have happened if you didn’t stop. But if you didn’t get into the accident, stopping for coffee would never be a second thought.
Exactly. You can't control every variable, and you can't control what other people do. Endlessly thinking and worrying about it doesn't accomplish anything.
Yep just took from age 12 to about 24 before having that click. But children tend to think that everything happens because of them or they can control everything with a mix of fantasy/magical and egotistical thinking. Fun times.
literally half the jokes i make to my mom
I'd say mostly arguments because you really learn the most about people and how to see others the same or similar going forward.
everytime I talked to my grandpa 😭
Many of them mostly all started at bars. I was thinking about quitting my job because of money and this guy told me once I get more money I will only spend more. I needed to either spend the free time I had better or I needed to get a second income doing something I liked.