Spoiler: I’m the old dog! I started another thread last night, about helping a friend. This led me to think about receptivity and resistance to change. I have some habits and personality traits that I have a hard time modifying, but I’ve also made a lot of adjustments over the years to my typical ways of doing things (many in response to my changing relationship status) and I always try to be open to new things.
Here are some examples: 1) I took over all the bookkeeping in the marriage. (Didn’t want to but ex had problems with dealing with forms and deadlines.)
2) I forced myself to drive in bad weather so that I’d be able to do so when necessary.
3) I took over responsibility for home maintenance and lawn care.
4) I’ve become more comfortable with hiring out tasks (see item 3).
5) I planted a zucchini. Seriously, I’m delving a bit into gardening, even though success, as measured by edibles, seems unlikely.
I’d like to know what other dogs, young and old, have learned or have changed about themselves. You folks inspire me!
I’m going to a gym, totally out of my comfort zone. I’m the type of person who can’t even do squats properly. Close to ZERO natural physical ability. But I know I need to stay in shape as I get older, so I’m going to do it.
H and I started playing an online interactive game–Pokémon Go. It gets us to walk a lot of steps nearly every day and is something we enjoy doing together.
When my husband died suddenly I had no choice but to take on the tasks he’d always handled like household bookkeeping/tax preparation, car maintenance, and hiring and dealing with outside contractors coming in to work on the house. It’s been four years and I would say that it’s only now that I feel semi-competent and don’t feel like I could make some horrific error that will cost me tons of money due to some silly mistake.
I feel very anxious when I drive in the winter after it has snowed. The only way I can get through it is to tell myself that I have to to stay employed.
I have always stressed over decisions - even to the point of driving my family members crazy when trying to constantly solicit their input. Because I research the heck out of each option, I am trying to train myself to understand that I should be able to comfortably go with any of my top 2 or 3 and that in the end it won’t matter. eeeeek!
I thought this post was going to be about how I could re train my H! :))
I am learning to accept imperfections by learning some woodworking skills. Like building cabinets out of fine veneer, edgebanding them and staining/varnishing.
I’ve been stepping out of my comfort zone getting involved in the political scene at the local level due to landscape of late. Definitely not something that has been in my wheelhouse but needs to be done.
I completely stepped out of my comfort zone and posted on NextDoor that I wanted to find a group
to play Mah Jongg. I got a bunch of responses that some could in 2 months.
SO (hugs for me ) I posted 2 months later and now have 3 volunteer teachers and 22 students being
taught and in Sept. a local community center with tables and such arrange by one of the gals who
responded to me. I also have table of 4 that I will begin to play with regularly. (this game is super addicting).
On New Years I declared to my D that my 2017 goal was to make two new friends. She asked me< “how are you going o do that?”. I responded that I just would.
And she knows that I just do not do this sort of out there stuff. So am super pleased with both myself
and I know the other folks are happy to have this happening!
A few days ago I was running with D and pointed out to her that a few years ago this was not possible for me. I started running about 1 1/2 years ago and now run 3x/week.
