Then Vs Now

As a kid, I was told by my parents that I am very disorganized and reckless, that I don’t know how to prioritize my work and that I will never be able to wisely administrate my money. Last month when I told my boyfriend, he started laughing and told me that I am the most organized and responsible person he knows. So what changed?

When we are kids our parents think they know us the best and they describe ourselves to us, interestingly enough, we accept the picture they paint us and take it as the correct one, even if things are completely different. All my adult life I thought that I am extremely reckless with spending the money I was receiving or earning, also that I am not able to correctly organize my work, so I kept on adding more and more rules to my day to day activities without realizing that I am no longer a kid and that I am setting too many limits for myself. Never for a second did I thought that I should be kinder and that I need to loosen up the rules that I am setting until my boyfriend pointed to me that I am not the way I think I am.

If I am to analyze my behavior and my lifestyle I realize that I never leave any bills unpaid, that I never delayed paying the rent or the credit card loan, I keep an agenda with everything I need to do for the day, I always start with the hardest task or the one that has a higher priority, I keep all my documents safe, I thoroughly organize every trip I make, I keep a list of the things I need to buy, I create a monthly budget and I stick to it most of the time. If those are not the characteristics of a very well organized and responsible person then I don’t know what is. But why did I fail to see this in the last 5 years?

Our parents will always have our best interest in mind, they want us to succeed in life and, usually, they want to see themselves in us, they want us to do great so that they feel great about our success, but they sometimes sabotage us with their behavior. Clearly, they are not wrong about everything, I know for sure I have my fair share of flaws, one being the fact that stress is my middle name, but we need to stop and ask ourselves if the way we see us, is the way we really are.

My desire to become nothing like the way my parents pictured me made me a better person at work and also made me be responsible for my personal life, but even so, enough is enough, I cannot live my complete life under very strict rules, sometimes I need to bend them in order to be happy. I strongly advise everyone do to some introspection and reevaluate the way they live their life, it might happen to discover that you are doing it completely wrong.

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