Overcoming Shyness
Some years ago I was standing outside a pub when an old blind man walked out the door and stood beside me. I watched with mild interest as he took a lighter from his pocket and lit a cigarette stub in his mouth. I was a painfully shy person at the time but for some reason I thought I’d speak to him. I commented on the bad weather and he agreed that it was pretty awful. I asked him if the rain made it harder to walk with his stick and he said no, he liked walking in the rain because there were less people in his way. Well we spoke for a while about many things including how a lot of the time when people helped him cross the road, he wouldn’t actually need to cross but he would, just to keep them from being embarrassed. He was a pretty funny guy.
Eventually I had to go so I said goodbye and the old man asked if he could have my hand for a second, a little confused I said of course. He took my hand and placed it on his chest for a second and then he let go and said “Thank you, you have touched a heart” and then he left. I was completely taken aback, what an amazing thing to say to a person, I think I beamed for a week! Continue reading »
Filed under Change, Fear, Feelings, Self-esteem, Shyness | Comment (0)How do I cope with pain?
For a long time I felt as if my pain and sorrow would never pass. My whole world had been turned upside down and I was struggling to come to terms with it all. One of the few friends I had left sent me a text one night, it said “Time heals all wounds”. Well my first instinct was to find him a hit him. What an irritating phrase! But it’s true and it does.
The pain I felt changed me in many ways, it made me find the courage to seek solutions I never would have tried before. I rang friends, I joined an aikido group to make new friends, I went to a councilor and eventually I joined a support group. I dealt with a lot of the problems that had added to me feeling so low. I never would have found any of these qualities if I hadn’t gone through my pain. It took time and it was hard but I came out of it all a stronger person. Continue reading »
Filed under Change, Crisis, Depression, Feelings, Grief, Pain | Comment (0)How to get over your ex
“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
When I was 27 years old something happened that hurt so much I thought my life was over. What I didn’t realise at the time was that it would be best thing that ever happened to me. It woke me up and finally I started to live.
So what happened? Well to put it simply, the woman who had been my partner for 11 years and my housemate for 7 years, left me for one of my best friends. Like a bad country song, I woke up one morning and everything was gone, my girlfriend, my home and most of my friends. Because the relationship began when I was just 16 years old, I found myself for the first time in my adult life hit by devastating emotions that I’d never really felt before like loneliness, despair and true, true sadness. Continue reading »
Filed under Change, Crisis, Depression, Freedom, Grief, Pain, Relationships | Comments (3)
