I am unique 🧒

I’m not complaining that I am kept busy and that my life as a pensioner is far from dull and boring! It’s just that I find it hard to find a balance! I have always thought of myself as an ‘all or nothing’ type of person.

Resorting to my good mate Google, I asked him for a definition. His first suggestion was ‘All or nothing thinking is especially common in perfectionists and those with mental health disorders like anxiety and depression’. Okay, not what I was expecting!

The next example wasn’t a lot better! ‘All or nothing thinking refers to thinking in extremes. You’re either a success or a failure’. Apparently it’s this binary way of thinking which never allows for grey! I can vouch for one thing! I don’t like grey!

Google was getting worse. ‘All or nothing thinking rarely matches reality and can set individuals up to feel confused or disappointed! A single mistake ruins an entire project!’ There were no positives!

I’d read enough. Maybe I should rethink the opinion I have of myself. Maybe I’m not as ‘black or white’ as I thought. I am a bit of a perfectionist, I don’t like failing at anything, but who does? I know my limitations so never get inflated ideas about winning at e.g sport. Most people gets bouts of depression and go though times of stress. Well, don’t they?

The more I read about this type of personality ‘disorder’ the more depressed I got and the more depressed I got the more my stress levels rose. I sat back in my chair and looked out of the window. It’s grey and mizzling. Yesterday, when we opened our garden for charity, the sun was shining. Our garden wasn’t perfect but we’d done our best. I didn’t feel a failure. Not a typical sign of ‘all or nothing’ personality disorder!

Another symptom was negative thinking. Ok, I could tick that box but do seem to have mellowed over the years. I’m still not the most optimistic person you’ll meet but I don’t walk around in a cloud of doom and gloom. I do set quite high standards for myself but allow a margin of error. Life happens, weather happens, you can’t control people either. Instead of having huge expectations about an outing or a holiday, I don’t expect anything. Nothing wrong with that! It’s being a realist!

I’ll own up. I have always been very hard on myself. I was my own worst enemy and can still beat myself up when certain things, often beyond my control, don’t go according to plan. But, and this is a big but, I’ve learnt to move on. I try never to dwell on disappointments, failures or mishaps for long.

Chatting to my daughter this weekend she said that, when she’s sad, she allows herself to acknowledge the pain. It’s what her brain is telling her she feels in that moment. But then she releases it, and tries to concentrate on something else. The sadness won’t suddenly go away and will probably return, but will not become the dominant emotion. I’m not talking about grief. That is completely different and I could never advise. It’s little disappointments, concerns, things causing upset outside of our control.

At the beginning of this blog I was being typically hard on myself. No surprise there! Sometimes it’s good to take time out and honestly assess where you are at the current stage of your life. I had to be ‘black or white’ in my job. Working in Treasury I had no choice. However, in my management role I definitely had to accept grey areas which I called compassion, being human.

Thank you, Google, for your assistance today. Not what I wanted to hear but you are only as good as the information fed to you. Our brains are very powerful organs and humans are so complex that we cannot be put into boxes. One size does not fit all.

We are made up of a number of character traits resulting in many different personalities. The older I’ve got the more I’ve come to realise that I am unique. As are each and every one of you. As long as we have compassion, generosity, respect and love for our fellow human beings, we should include these attributes for ourselves too.

And we should never give up trying to be our best selves, regardless of what life and genetics have thrown at us!👠