I no longer worry about what others think about me. That sounds great, but it wasn’t easy to get to this point. I was brought up in a pretty nice environment. My parents were nice, my friends’ parents were nice. I turned out pretty nice. We tried to avoid trouble. We worried about what other people thought about us. We avoided conflict where possible, at least until it was too late, and then someone had a blow up, and pretty soon we could all move past it and pretend that it didn’t happen.

Later in life this caused me problems with relationships and at work. I am naturally conflict averse. I spent time worrying about what others would think. My parents literally told me I should wear clean underwear in case I got hit by a bus – because “What would people think?” Seriously. I get hit by a 10+tonne bus, and my parents are worried that someone will think they are no good because my undies aren’t clean… Regardless of whether they were clean that morning, with a bus bearing down on me, I’m pretty sure I would have messed up those clean undies anyway …

Conflict Aversion

I’ve worked on my conflict aversion over the years with my wife and with managers and coaches at work. I’ve learnt techniques to use and I’ve improved a lot. But the basic character trait remains. I think about every situation from the other person’s perspective and often I prioritise them. If possible, I dodge the conflict and hope it goes away. As far as I can tell, that means I have a fair bit in common with lots of people.

Well, that’s how things used to be. Until the day everything changed <see my story>. My life was turned upside down and the foundation of security in my life was taken away from me in an instant. Whether my wife lived or died was out of my hands. I had to lead myself, my children, and hopefully her through whatever was next. That was my purpose in life. It was pretty easy to focus on that.

I was terrified. Literally. I dearly wish it never happened. But it did. The challenge is to find the good within the bad. One of the good things is that I now don’t give a f**k what other people think of me – regardless of the state of my underpants.

Stop worrying

This change was instantaneous, but it took me quite a while to realise it. The social worker at the hospital was great. She said I was going to need a lot of help. So she got me to call my brother straight away. She got me to call my wife’s parents overseas (not fun). All of a sudden I was effectively a single parent. My wife was in a coma, being kept alive by a machine. I have 3 kids, I needed to be at the hospital, I needed to look after the kids, I couldn’t do both at the same time. I needed to ask for help so I started with my brother. Then one of the neighbours, then the kids’ schools. And on it went. All of a sudden I was able to say “No” to things. Sure, this was a textbook definition of a crisis, and you can’t muck around, but the change was permanent. Yes, my life is still stupidly busy and I don’t have time to muck around, but I really do not worry about what other people think anymore, and the change has stuck around for 3 years so far.

It is amazingly liberating. I just get on with doing the right thing. I face into stuff and I give honest and polite feedback. I’m not rude, but if something isn’t working for me, or if I’m not going to be able to do it, or if it just isn’t a priority, I tell people. None of the consequences I was afraid of have happened:

• People don’t get angry
• People don’t get disappointed
• They don’t think less of me. In fact, the opposite is true. If anything, my relationships with people have improved.

It turns out that people don’t actually spend much time thinking about me at all – which is great. They’ve got other stuff on their mind. I wish I had worked this out over 40 years ago. It would have saved an awful lot of heartache, sleepless nights and wasted time.

Be yourself and get what you want

On the positive side I:

• Sleep is better (or at least the things that keep me awake have nothing to do with worrying about what people might think, or how clean my undies are).
• Am way more productive at home and at work, and I get to focus on my agenda, not someone else’s.
• Avoid some (not all) blow ups at home, because I’m honest about how I’m feeling, and I can discuss things that aren’t working for me with me family before things get out of hand. I feel I’m also role modelling better behaviour for my kids – I’m not perfect at all, but at least I’m nowhere near as bad as I would have been.
• Get way more help, because I’m now able to ask for it
• Receive more offers from people of help, because they can see how they can help
• Am prepared to try things out, and I’m ok if they don’t work – both big and little.

In fact, the old version of me never would have written any of this, let alone published it. But now I’m not afraid to have a go. If people don’t like it, that’s ok. They’ll spend their time on other things. I get a benefit from just writing it. I also get a benefit from having a go. From trying. On top of that, if I can help just one person, then that’s awesome.

Franklin Roosevelt wrote it a lot better than me:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

I’m not aiming quite that high, but the point is well made – stop worrying and have a go… or just …

Be Brave