Author: Andrea Grassi

Everything has a story, one that’s visible in plain sight, one that’s hidden below the words, under the clear ground.

It’s the reason why when we talk to people we omit our emotions, we don’t talk about them out loud, we don’t show them. We hide them because it’s easy, because we are not used to it.

Those emotions have some luggage with them. They carry many meanings. Many untold stories that are worth to be told.

We were sitting at a table and a friend speaks to her wife about how they could leave their child to his grandma so they could do a small 3 days trip.

She said no and started discussing about it like if she didn’t want to leave her child.
It made sense, but there was another story.
There was a story of a mother that was worried, and she thought that they could try to see how the baby would react, and if it did go well they’d go to the trip, otherwise they’d stay at home.

That story also had another untold story, the story of her feeling “bad”, worried about her child, unsure about her role of mother and her skills, a story she didn’t see into the mirror of her husband because he was calm and relaxed. This difference in the reaction made her think that she was wrong and he was treating her like a stupid teenager, which she was not.

She didn’t told him this story. It took a while to get to that, but it’s clear at first sight that we hide information to be less vulnerable.
The downside is that we create a paradox: To be less vulnerable, we are more open to attacks and fights.

Planting a seed, trusting an unknown person, is big human. Is the foundation of our best self.

Looking for a promotion, hoping for a raise, chasing the right or wrong, is little human.

You can be each of them, or both.

Being able to do something is often a matter of perspective.

There are many things that seem impossible, but some people can do it. Are they magician? No, they simply figured out how to do it.

When we say “I can’t do it” beforehand we’re expressing our little hope in the outcome, the fact that we feel like our skills don’t match the test. We feel lower than expected.

But if you see it this way, then you just decided what you can’t do. Not because you can’t, but because you don’t believe in it.

Perspective.

If you’re struggling with a career choice you can always think about what’s important for you. For some people it is required to have the best job in the world, others need just a job because their life is outside.

It’s mostly a matter of priorities, but sometimes we are fooled by our expectations and by how we continue measuring ourselves against other people.
What we should do instead is measure what we like against what we have. Measure what makes us happy against what we have.

Because what makes other people happy, fulfilled, great, might not be the same for us. We might not need the same job, the same aspirations, the same goals. Our goals might differ, but we get fooled by comparing ourselves with others, we get fooled by their status mostly.

I have an old school friend. When we were kids nobody would trust him because he was the kind of boy who’d get into trouble.

He was not that troublesome, he was just more active and more curious than others, which led him to do some things that were borderline, but he never crossed the line of good and bad. He was 100% good and that showed every time.

Yet, many people didn’t trust him based on this prejudice.

When I was a kid I didn’t know a thing about self help, how to improve myself, heck…I didn’t even know if I wanted to improve. Now we live in a world when everyone can theoretically be an expert on some topic. Now we seek advices from the best, hoping that they will give us the secret key, the shortcut, the way to happiness.

We don’t learn only when we want to, though.
It happens that learning can be casual, it can come from things and people you wouldn’t imagine.

I went to my friend’s house few weeks ago. He has a great home, but live modesty. They had a baby last year so their finances might have taken a hit, yet they resembled an amazing couple. Happy, bonded, wonderful.

We talked about the issue with pregnancy and so forth and he then said to me “One of the key things being calm and serene in the family”.
It struck me. I’m always hyper-active, always checking things, thinking about what’s done correctly and what’s not.

He pointed out one critical aspect I was totally putting into my low priorities, and it struck a cord within me.

Today an acquaintance told this phrase (not to me) “Whenever you fail you can’t stop, because sooner or later you’ll need to face that failure. If not that you’ll face a new one”.

Today, also, a friend and colleague pointed out that I was not writing like before.

All these people, they’re reminders, they’re teachers, they’re students.
They were always there, but I didn’t see them, I didn’t hear them.

In a world of self help, of tutorials, of vlogging, trusting the people in our circle seems so old style, yet it is something that can be immensely useful.