There are many people in this world who have unstoppable wills and a ‘never say die’ mindset about everything they do. I don’t particularly enjoy being around them, but I don’t judge them for being this way anymore than I judge you for not being this way. However, I do wish it was enough for them to just feel this way. Sadly it is not. Some of these people feel the need to infect the earth with their positive motivation double talk. So, I am compelled to key you in on a little bit of truth. There are many times, that at some point, you must simply know when to admit defeat.
I will use myself as an example. My room is a pig sty. It has always been so. This is the room where all of my toys are, and the room in which I spend the majority of my time. I don’t necessarily like it this way but after about 40 years of living in squalor I decided that maybe I did not have the skillsets required to live as most human beings do.
Know When
You might ask; why give up? Well, besides the attempt being completely futile, there are many other reasons. There are the many things I have achieved as a result of not wasting that time doing the things I already knew I could not do. Instead, I found other things I could do. It has been those things on which I have focused my efforts.
Now, let’s assume for a moment that I did indeed live with my head up my ass and I devoted the last five years with that ‘never say die’ attitude.
Perhaps, though doubtful, I would have learned to keep my room clean. Perhaps, I would finally be able to come home to a clean house and relax, while enjoying the fruits of my labor, absent the dirty dishes, laundry, and debris from one side to the other. That may sound nice to some of you. I do understand the draw of living this way, but the question I ask myself is this; at what cost would all of this come?
The Cost
For one, I would not have had the time to improve my writing as a blogger so I could one day write a book. I wouldn’t have had the time to spend a year going through the editing process. Therefore, one of my dear friends I work with would never have gone to her doctor and had her life changed as a result of her treatment for ADHD that she did not previously know she had.
Without my blog followers, I would not have built up enough confidence that so many people gave me through my writing to do a podcast that my wife and I enjoy doing together. There would be many people around the world who would have never heard of me and therefore never received the benefit of my counsel. To think of the tragedy of a world without Tom Nardone; a world in which the majority are denied access to my awesomeness brings a tear to my eye.
So, as I sit here and ponder over the decision I made, and perhaps as you may ponder about a similar dilemma you find yourself in, perhaps you will ask yourself the same question I asked myself.
What is more important?
Yes. I could sit here in my clean house with nothing out of place, laundry completed, dishes washed, yard mowed, body in shape, and all the other things deemed important by so many others.
Or
I can live in filth and touch thousands of lives through my attitude about the way I live my life.
There was never a decision. The choice to me was, and still is as I have done. I’ve never questioned it. I chose my own path in spite of the path so many others were upon. I am proud of myself, and I love myself. I’m the person I am, and I am the person I always wanted to be. The idea of being someone else or anybody else will never appeal to me.
I am Tom Nardone, and You are welcome.
I’m a fountain of insight, drink from me!
~ Tom Nardone
Thank you Tom,
Trying to live like ‘normal’ people has kept me in a state of self-loathing, while denying me the time or confidence to focus on what I am good at. Oddly, since letting go of that putting my energy into things I’m good and enjoy doing (I’m an artist.. I paint, I’m happy when I’m creating… not doing dishes) my ‘messiness’ has actually decreased. I’m not fighting who I am and all that energy feeling guilty, or less than, is more available to me now.
We need to give ourselves permission to be who we are, and reject the ‘status quo’ or standards that keep us from loving ourselves and finding our own unique way of shining.
Beautifully said Michelle. Congratulations on your art. 🙂 🙂 🙂
Your response is beautiful, thank you for sharing, Michelle. I hope many more will do as you suggest!
Thank you! Thank you as I sit here doing just F#%+* that with a near teary eye. I gave up crying with my wonderful anti depressants, God Love those helpful little cuties. I am continually cerebrally torturing myself, NO, truly abusing myself bc I cannot keep up with Life as they know it. The BOY, 8, third grade is the ADHDer, ME, I’m the chronically ill, pain in the pelvis mom w/o hormones (TMI, but there’s a point, I promise!) of whom some supreme being thought it would be fun to pair, along with an overly sensitive and highly emotional but also emotionally intelligent young lass of 6, in first grade. In addition, as nature DICK tates, a HE, is here too but I choose not to go there.
The TMI, above makes me very similar to THE BOY and I’d never treat him the way I treat myself! So, bc I have a “Post apocalyptic pre school/ Mid Century modern look, I WILL NO LONGER give myself twenty lashing’s, seventy Hail Mary’s and negative self talk. Thank you kind Sir. Btw, people who are messy are shown to be both more creative and intelligent, or so I read someplace. If I’m pulling that one out of my Fannie (which I don’t think I am) We are surely more interesting!
Elle you are welcome and greatly enjoyed the energy in your comment. You and people like you make what I do lots of fun and very rewarding.