will the real issue here please stand up?

"nothing is going right!"
"everyone is mad at me"
"people won't like it"

generalizations and absolutes are tricky beasts.
they create these walls of abmiguous 'realities' we can hide behind.

hide?...ME?!

well, yeah - i mean,
how can you protect yourself if you don't know what the danger is?
how can you fix a leak if you don't know where the crack is?
how can you change your situation if you don't know
where your part begins?
how can you deal with anything effectively if you
refuse to define it?

you can't.
so you are, in effect, hiding.

in my family, the popular way to hide is behind the "people."

"well, some people might not want to do that…"
"there are people who aren't eating sugar these days, so we shouldn’t eat there…"
"people are upset about that…"

O those people!!

to quote one of the wisest people I know (aka kim),

"saying 'people' sounds massive and completely unmanageable!
it's like…like a thick fog that you can't look at or deal with
because you can't even see what it is!..."

(hey…yeah! just who ARE these people, anyway!?)

"...but if you were to just blow aside the smoke for a second,
you'd realize it’s just so-n-so standing there amid the fog.
really? just one person? maybe two?!
i can handle that!"

therein lies the problem with generalizing and absolute-ing everything:
it MASKS the reality of the problem so we can feel justified in not addressing it.

it's too obscure,
too massive,
too cOmPliCatEd,
too h u g e ,
too whatever, etc, etc, etc…

it takes courage to wave aside the smoke to see what's really there - it does!
i think we try to mask it because we fear that
whatever IS in there
we maybe couldn't handle.

but we CAN handle it!

"nothing is going right!"
nothing? not a single thing in any way?...or just maybe that one thing you really had your heart set on? and possibly a few burned dinners or assignments missed on top of it? look at those two or three little realities for a second - can you handle that? YES, you CAN!

"everyone is mad at me!"
everyone - every single person in the whole world (including me, which i highly doubt)? …or is it someone important to you so it feels like the whole world? let's pretend they really ARE mad at you and will never recover - that's one person among billions. one person with their own baggage. one person whose opinion doesn't change the opinion of an Almight God who ISN'T mad at you. one person - can you handle that? YES!! YES YOU CAN!

"people might not like it..."
people? like who? a crazed mob?! ...or maybe just one member of your family, or one person in your class, or one critic that could easily be spoken to like an adult about the situation? and if they can't be reasoned with like an adult…does their opinion really matter?
if we're all being mature here, we should all be free to and be supportive of everyone chosing to like what they like, go where they want to go and be who they want to be. if somone can't be mature about it, there is nothing we can do to change them. so we might as well do what we really feel is best despite their negative views/opinions. if they love you - THEY WILL GET OVER IT.

could we handle that - handle possibly upsetting someone by doing what we think is best for us instead of what they want?

YES - I say, we could handle that!

let's stop and blow away the smoke a little more often.
lets see our fears and intimidations for what they really are:
smaller, more manageable problems that we CAN handle
if we face them.

we CAN!

time to pull out my leaf-blower!...