Perspective

Perspective is a great thing. Perspective is a matter of distance.  Objects that you are directly in front of are larger than they really are.  This is true with everything, the people,  events, and institutions that are a part of your lives today. 

The great thing that the FD taught me is how to manage things when all hell is breaking loose.  You break things down into manageable components.   It comes down to 3 basic things for you and the people around you.  The things that will kill you, the things that will hurt you, and the things that will hurt your feelings/pride/ego/career/job.  You get resources to manage events based on those 3 basic categories.  Things get escalated unnecessarily because you believe that EVERYTHING will kill you and respond that way.

Give the highest priority to the things that will kill you.  I want to be very specific here.  If what is going to happen next will cause you stop breathing, bleed to death, or stop your heart, they fall under the things that kill you category.   EVERYTHING else falls into a different category.  Respond accordingly

The things that will hurt you are the things that will physically hurt you.  There are things that will require a medical professional to fix.  You can do a lot of things to manage these events.  The biggest one is avoidance.  Things very rarely escalate to physical harm without the compliment of a string of bad to marginally bad judgment calls.  There is a common thread in these bad judgments.  Drinking, drugs, or an overstatement / understatement (intentionally or unintentionally) of a current situation.  If someone cries WOLF, most everyone will come running.  Respond Accordingly

The broadest category is that things that hurt your feelings/ego/pride/career/job.  This is also the category that is the most forgiving in terms of impact to you.  Tickets, Sanctions, Bad Grades, Bad Supervisors/Bosses/Coworkers, Bad Significant others and plain old mistakes on your part will not hurt or kill you.  You are going to have to apply drugs, liquor or bad judgment to make that happen.  Respond Accordingly

Learning is a lot of trial and error.  You find out what works by discovering what does not.  You can also do this by observing this in other people as well.  Pride and ego keep you from trial and error until learning something new is more compelling.  Making mistakes is only a problem when a distinct pattern of them starts to emerge.

If your feelings/ego/pride are hurt, you have to got to suck it up a little.  Great strides in learning often bruise the ego.


Love Dad