Monday, February 17, 2014

Are you ready

This has been doing the rounds on Facebook for a while now and every time I read it I find myself torn between wanting to nod my head vigorously and say "Yes! so true! get on with things and don't wait to feel ready!" (that would be the impulsive part of me) and ''good grief that is ridiculous, of course one should wait until one is totally sure about making a decision, especially one that warrants consideration of readiness!''

There is no doubt, that the cliches about there never being a right time to have a baby, or buy a house, or change career, or get married.... or any of those other life rocking events, are probably true. That if you wait until you are ''ready'' it just might be too late.  (Says who? What is late? A whole other topic....) On the other hand, it's also entirely feasible to rush in to those same events without weighing up consequences and find that ready was a long way off.

So as I thought about this today, as I plodded through the minutiae of life and  in the here and now - I reached this conclusion:

Its not that far from the idea of coin tossing that I have blogged about before.  Its putting that tiny bit of pressure on oneself to make a decision. Or not.  


Yes it is true that there is probably no such time as being truly ready.  Not often anyway.  But there IS such time as wanting to be ready.  Or not wanting to be.  And for me, that is the key.  So for example, you may not be totally ready, or sorted, or organised, or mentally clued in, to say...changing career.  

The timing might be a bit off.  But I reckon there's a really good chance that its simply something you either want to do (and feel you might one day actually be ready for) or it isn't.  That might mean waiting til you're 'readier'. Or it might mean getting on with the thing you really want, even if current circumstances don't seem to allow it.  And perhaps that is enough.



Friday, February 07, 2014

what did you just say?

This morning there was an amusing conversation on the radio about the top five worst pieces of advice you can offer: listen here or in summary:

1. You just need to watch what you eat
2. You just need to figure out what you want to do with your life
3. You just need to have a positive attitude/cheer up
4. You just need to believe in yourself
5. You just need to be yourself

Isn't that the truth...what a load of rubbish - five platitudes that mean absolutely nothing and offer nothing of value to anyone.  Now I am all in favour of the ''if its not nice don't say it'' line of thinking.  However, I am (usually) brave enough to offer an opinion if I'm asked for it.

But how do you know when the right time to be honest is?  Someone recently said that they often hear ''whatever makes you happy'' from a particular friend.  My view is that this is probably not what that friend means at all.  In fact, I'd go so far to say that there's a pretty good chance that either a. the friend actually doesn't have an opinion/doesn't care, or b. the friend has a very strong opinion but it doesn't take the popular view( or she's scared of how it will be received).  On the other hand, I know someone who is famous for their phenomenally bad advice - usually on practical matters but never based on fact or reality.

A few months ago, over at the other blog,  I wrote about my ''intervention'' when I was asked for an opinion (read it here).  I was gentle about it (of course I was) but I still gave an opinion. Not ''do what feels right'' or any of that rubbish.  No platitudes allowed.

So what's a girl to do? Does one take the ''everyone is entitled to my opinion'' line?  Does one put up and shut up?  When asked for an opinion, do you trust that the person asking actually wants to hear what you have to say? And are you brave enough to be honest?

Have you caught yourself offering a bland, vanilla kind of piece of advice when you know you could do so much better?