As I've got older, I've learned not to arrange my life so much to please other people at my own expense, or to be so concerned about how I look, or what other people think of me. I always ask myself now - What is it I really want to do? Of course, I still like doing things for people I care about, but I do them because I want to, not out of a sense of obligation. A friend of mine had a nice saying that has stayed with me:

"What other people think of me is none of my business."


Another thing that has slowly dawned on me is that all those clever "competent" business-like people out there that I used to be in awe of, aren't nearly as clever or competent as I thought they were. for a long time I used to wonder how other people kept things together so well while I was always struggling - or so it seemed to me.

More and more in the last few years particularly I've been noticing everybody else making elementary mistakes all over the place. They forget appointments, mis-spell large public signs, don't ring back, don't get around to doing what they said they would do, have messy houses, burn the dinner, and a thousand other little things. I now see that the cool and competent look is mostly just that - a look.

In fact, I found out to my amazement that a lot of people I know think of me as a particularly cool competent well-organized person! I think - if only they knew! The secret of course is that most of us go to great lengths to present the cool calm exterior to the world, while, like a swan, underneath we are paddling furiously. This really was a revelation to me, and made me feel a lot more relaxed about myself.