r0dman.com

I regularly read a large Australian based car enthusiast forum. It’s something that has carried over from my late teenage/early 20′s years when I was really interested in cars. Nowadays, it’s just somewhere to kill some time when I’m bored at work. While the forum frustrates me at times, it always pulls me back in because it’s the one forum where I can post and have a reply in a matter of minutes, sometimes seconds.

The average user on this forum is around the 16-17 year old mark, however there are plenty outside of those years, and it is an interesting insight into how my generation thinks. I’m fairly judgemental with the other users on this forum – to me, the majority of them are ignorant idiots who never use their brains. They struggle to consider things outside of the norm, and live in a very sheltered world.

Recently a thread was started by a member who’s friend had just died. He was asking people what they wanted from life, and how to know what to want. The others replied talking about the good and bad things that can happen in a life, and how it makes them feel, but what they never seem to talk about is controlling these good and bad things.

I don’t really want to preach the whole “power of positive thinking” thing, but it is worth pointing out that much more is in our control than we may think.

For example, since beginning work as a teacher, my partner hasn’t been the best communicator. Whatever I’d talk to her it would always be an information overload of what her students were working on, how they were acting, and so on, but she would never really talk to me about how she was doing.. Whether or not she was tired, stressed, happy, sad and so on. For a while it was a real issue for me – I like to know everything about her life so I can help her out in any way that I can, but she wouldn’t give me the information.

We are all different communicators – she never meant to keep information from me, and had no need to – just subconsciously didn’t believe that that was information relevant to our conversations. I on the other hand come home from work and tell her how happy, frustrated, etc my day was. During this time it was something that I believed had to be changed by her. After all, she was the one that wasn’t telling me how she felt – how could I change that?

My life coach put me on to some different communication methods that could help me to articulate what it was I was looking for when talking to my fiancee. As it turns out, some people don’t respond well to blunt questions about their emotions. Rather than just sit there and get frustrated, I now pick my questions carefully. Something that was previously out of my control, is now well within my control. I am now able to communicate more effectively with my partner, and get the information that I need from her.

Depression is a big one. I work with a lot of people that are depressed, and truthfully, it’s the environment. The culture in my workplace is to avoid work at all costs, postpone change until later, and let someone else take responsibility for decisions. As a result, it’s a tough place to work. Some handle it fine, and others struggle with it to the point where it is visibly affecting their life outside of work. At first glance, I can’t change the culture. I can’t encourage change – I’m not a manager. Realistically though, you can. Myself and a few others are always proactively looking for new work to be taken on. While the uptake of this new work is rare, when it does come around, we are the first to be picked to work on it – after all, we are the ones that have been asking for it.

Even health issues can be within our control. Diabetes, heart disease, and so on is largely caused by poor diet and lack of exercise. The most important thing to any animal is their health, and it is well within our abilities to control this.

There are a million examples that I could use for this one, but the point is the same. We can control so much in our lives than we are led to believe. Next time you are in a bad situation, learn from it – figure out what could be done better, and take the positives from it. Educate yourself to control your life, not just sit in your seat and see where it takes you!

In a world where we are surrounded by so much negativity, it’s my belief that no matter what, we should always look for the positives in the negatives. Throughout our lives we are faced with all sorts of negative happenings. This might be something small like a co-worker being a nuisance to you at work, or bigger things like having a partner cheat on you. The list is endless if you want to dwell on it!

With a negative mind, you can become frustrated, hurt and eventually depressed by these sorts of things, but if you view them in a positive light you become a much stronger person for it.

Take my parents for instance – they broke up when I was around 14. At the time my world came crashing down and I didn’t really know what to think. I lost the constant in my life – my home no longer housed a family, and my parents didn’t even speak anymore! Looking back on it all – they used to argue at home and it wasn’t the best environment to be growing up in (don’t get me wrong, there wasn’t any hitting or drunken rage or that sort of thing happening). My mum was just impossible to my father, and my dad pretty much just hated his life. While the divorce was hard for everyone, nowadays my dad is enjoying his life, and my mum has the freedom to do what she wants. The whole thing has made me much closer to my sister, and I have become a much stronger person because of it. With time to think about it, I can’t see there being any positives from my parents staying together.

Stay calm and stay composed – look for the positives in the negatives that surround your life, and enjoy them. There are plenty.

Having a passion in life is something that I have always been lucky enough to have, without giving it much thought. While I feel very passionate about my fiancee, I think it is important for everyone to have something else to live for than their partner. For me, it’s bikes. Downhill bikes, road bikes, cross country bikes, commuting bikes and so on. My life pretty much evolves around riding them, reading up on new ones, building bikes, cleaning and maintaining them, and helping out others who are looking for advice. Riding bikes isn’t a hobby to me – my life has grown around it!

Some people just have hobbies, while others are just so passionate about what they do – it’s instantly visible about how they feel.

Last weekend I caught up with my brother in law. The usual drinks and talking led us to his study where he had his keyboards hooked up to his computer and speakers – his little home studio. While he has played in a band in the past, this is his way of being about to make music on his own at any given time. Up until now I’d never really thought much about it. It just seemed as though it was something that he did, however when he was explaining everything to me I could just see it in the way he was talking – he really loves music, and has a real passion for it. We mucked around for about an hour with a few different sounds that sounded really cool at the time – not sure what they sound like sober though.

Another of my friends is right into his culture. It sounds like an odd one – culture, and it has visibly taken a few years for him to find himself, but it is obvious now that he has embraced the culture that he has grown up with, and experienced overseas while travelling, and defined it into cooking, eating, drinking and so on. I know others that enjoy eating and cooking, but his life really evolves around it. He spends his time making different flavoured spirits – to the point where he is growing special roses just to get the right flavour, and always has something new about food to tell me about whenever I see him.

In a world where no-one seems to have any direction, it’s nice to see some other people with such a strong passion. It gives you a purpose and a path to where you are heading, and if nothing else, makes day to day living that much sweeter!

While I’m not really that different to most people out there, I suppose I have some fairly different ideals. It’s empowering (and once again, this sounds arrogant, but it’s not intended that way) to think that since I’ve actually given it some thought, I may well know a better way to live my life.

The problem is, it’s hard to have a plan that you should stick to, when it doesn’t really align with your current goals. I’m currently working a job that I don’t really enjoy, while my fiancee works a job that means she has no time to spend with me, surrounded by people that shoot my ideas down as soon as they hear them. Not a very constructive environment!

So I’ve come to the conclusion that to keep my sanity I just need to switch my brain off for a few months. Next year the changes begin. I’ll have time with my partner and we will travel the world and just see where it takes us. I still very much want to be financially independant, but that doesn’t mean rich. Next year will hopefully lead me towards the life that I truly want – Lots of bike riding, lots of time spent outdoors, healthy food, and most importantly lots of quality time with my fiancee.

It sounds like a lot of “me, me, me” doesn’t it? I’ve spoken with my partner a lot about this now – both of us have come to the conclusion that the best way to support eachother is to be happy in our lives. Both of us need to chase our dreams, we just need to make them work together.

For now though, I’ll keep drinking on the weekends, I’ll keep going to barbeques, and I’ll try to keep my mouth shut when I speak to another 21 year old who wants to buy an investment property.

You know how kids just can’t do anything wrong in their parents’ eyes?

While my dad was never very successful, he grew up as a typical Aussie male.. He bought a few Holdens, got a trade, bought a boat, got married then divorced, then met my mother and sold the boat and had a family. He’d always told me how the choices that he made in life were never good enough for his dad and how he never had any support from him. On mum’s side, her mum was sick and her dad was pretty much a no show after her early teens, so she had to fend for herself from a young age with little support once again. Her dad has always given her a hard time about the choices that she has made in life too.

This seems quite common talking to a lot of  mates’ parents. Their parents would always be disappointed by them – things like what career they chose, that they didn’t buy a house early enough, got married too late and so on.

Turn it around though, and things appear to be completely different now. A considerable portion of my friends since leaving school have either travelled, and blown their cash in sacrifice of life experience, or bummed around at uni and not really achieved much, and with the full support of their parents! It’s like the Baby Boomers have learned that the way that they did it was wrong. They are almost giving us approval, or consent to go out there and just live – not necessarily find a safe job or start a family – just enjoy life.

Maybe it’s the way that we portray our lives to our parents – I know that my parents are very proud of the way that my fiancee and I are living our lives. Working now – going overseas next year. My dad is extremely proud of the way that I can go out drinking with the boys without my fiancee, and she trusts me, and vice-versa.

All things considered, the Baby Boomers seem to have faith in their kids – the Gen Y’s, despite some pretty poor decisions on our behalf from time to time.

Maybe they are just learning that there is in fact more than one way to live your life? Or have they just had such a safe life by taking their parents’ advice and getting a safe job, buying a house early and starting a family young, that they are happy to see their kids out there experiencing new things and taking some risks? Risks that they never took and now regret it?