For today, Day 4 of the Thirty Days of Me Challenge, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m supposed to talk about a habit I wish I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have. If only there weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so many to choose from. I could go for the low hanging fruit and wish I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t eat so many chips or so much chocolate. I could say I spend too much time on the computer and the internet. I could say I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m too prone to thinking the worst of someone, then feeling guilty about it and essentially giving them a free pass. Or, maybe, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talking badly about myself.<\/p>\n
Those are too easy. And, except for the last two, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re really habits I seriously wish I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have. Because, if I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to have them, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think I would. And that last one is a symptom of the habit I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to talk about today. Stubbornness.<\/p>\n
Yes. That. You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell me anything. Sure, if I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know you well, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be polite and pretend to listen. But, if I do know you well, my hackles go up, and I get pretty defensive. You, see, if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re offering a suggestion, it must mean you think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m doing it wrong<\/em> or maybe I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just too stupid to live <\/em>(and competency is very important to me). And sometimes, your method is better, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll usually come around to acknowledging that. And, yes, sometimes (but not often, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think), I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done something that might indicate I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m too stupid to live, but, thankfully, God still has plans for me, because in spite of that, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still here.<\/p>\n But I want to do it myself<\/em>. And I resist efforts to help and, unless I know I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know, most efforts to offer suggestion. If I know I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know, I love for someone to show me when I want to know something (because competency is important to me).<\/p>\n The problem is, sometimes, I would have been a lot wiser to listen to suggestions or accept offers of assistance. I became aware of this almost twenty years ago, and I have made a concerted effort to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to think about that\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Would you tell more more about that?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d instead of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No. Thank you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Because, when I think about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or get more information about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I often realize \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that\u00e2\u20ac\u009d would have been a good thing. But I lost the chance because I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No. Thank you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I think part of this response can be traced to my Introvert tendencies and needing time to process information before being able to come to a wise conclusion about it. Alas, real life doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have time to wait for the Introvert to process information. Real life demands answers. Now. And if I have to give an answer NOW, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to be some version of NO.<\/p>\n Are you following along with anyone else doing this challenge? You can find Tammy<\/a>, Tina, Krista<\/a>, and Kat<\/a> at these links.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For today, Day 4 of the Thirty Days of Me Challenge, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m supposed to talk about a habit I wish I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have. If only there weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so many to choose from. I could go for the low hanging fruit and wish I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t eat so many chips or so …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-30-days-of-me"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2076"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14680,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions\/14680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}