Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Making Unpopular Decisions

At different times in everyone's life we are faced with making difficult decisions. Although these decisions may seem gut-wrenching and awful to the ones having to make them, outsiders without all the information will feel the need to add their two cents. At this point, a bad situation can turn toxic and volatile. This causes the original decision maker to have to make another difficult, but necessary, decision to cut these negative influences out of the decision making process and also cut them completely out of their lives in general.

Basically, what I'm saying is, if you don't have all the facts, keep your mouth shut. Throwing in your unwanted, unsolicited, and uninformed advice on how to fix the situation only makes it that much harder for the folks having to make the decisions. Didn't your mother tell you "if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all"? Guess you'll be pretty dang quiet for a while then won't you?!?!

When one is faced with a constant barrage of negativity piled on top of an already negative situation, we tend to fight. The hardest thing to do is sit back and let that particular negative individual make a complete a** of themselves, because you know they will. I don't have any great advice for these situations, having grown up with family like this, I'm at a total loss. I don't remember ever, in my entire life, ever hearing my mother say she was proud of me for anything. Did that define my entire life, no, of course it didn't. In fact, it made me push harder to be exactly the opposite of everything I was ever taught. It's also what gave me my sparkling with and sense of humor. After all, if you can't laugh at your crazier than bat sh** family, who can you laugh at?!?!

It's really easy to sit on the outside and judge and tell people what they ought to be doing. It's a whole lot harder to be on the inside making the unpopular and tough decisions with the peanut gallery throwing insults and rotten vegetables. In the end, it's about what's best for yourself and your immediate family. That's all that matters, the rest will either figure it out or go on down the road. If one sits around worried about what everyone else thinks about them all the time, when does that one get to live the life they want? NEVER, because that one will NEVER be what everyone thinks they should be. And is that so bad?! I don't think so.

If you're living your life to please other people and what you think they want you to be, you are absolutely wasting the life God gave you. This is YOUR life, it was given to you as a gift, why spoil it trying to please people here on Earth? Pleasing everyone else should never be on anyone's To Do List. Pleasing God should be at the top of your To Do List.