WHY DID IT TAKE ME SO LONG TO FIGURE OUT THESE THINGS?
By Bill Cottringer

I am not sure why it took me so long to figure these things out. Maybe it is because I am a slow learner or maybe because I wanted to know so much and it was natures way of teaching me patience. Maybe that is what I will finally discover. At any rate, here are some of my most latest lessons:

1. What goes around comes around, just not appearing to be in an orderly, fair or timely fashion, according to your expectations or preferences.
2. My most awesome power is in the thoughts I have about myself and others, especially the negative thoughts I have about other people.
3. Without hope and humor you have nothing.
4. Growing up is mainly a matter of becoming more aware of your power and learning how to use it responsibly.
5. When all is said and done, nothing much gets done without the last minute effort of follow-up and follow-through.
6. You don’t really know where you are going until you take the time to see where your feet have been pointed and already took you three-fourths of where you are standing now.
7. How much or how little you buy in a grocery store is related to how hungry you are or how bad you have to go to the bathroom; when you eat and go to the rest room beforehand you still don’t buy sensibly. There is no good rule here.
8. We all have bad judgment when it comes to estimating how much we can accomplish in an hour and how little we can do in a year.
9. Good time management is mostly a matter of learning how to say no to other people’s priorities and emergencies.
10. When you use somebody else’s definition of success you will never have it; when you develop your own definition, you are already successful.
11. None of us are where we really want to be; and we won’t get there until we all admit it in one loud voice.
12. Whatever good and bad you do to others you are really doing to yourself but why is this connection so hard to see? It must be because there is no distance between what you do and the consequences you get, or better yet, mirrors are deceiving.
13. Sometimes things are exactly how they appear and sometimes there is no resemblance; a major challenge is to recognize this difference before it becomes a problem.
14. There is no way we can really know something for absolute certainty so why do we pretend we can?
15. Ego is the littlest thing with the biggest negative impact and the hardest thing to shed when you need to get rid of it the most; even increasing humility can be an ego thing.
16. The quickest and best way to have what you want is to want what you have; but we think that is weak passivity and “settling,” at least until we do it and experience the results.
17. We really do waste a lot of valuable time doing things we don’t like doing and then complaining about it and not finding alternative ways of getting the things done so we can do the things we want to do.
18. How many times am I going to rehearse battles with other people in my head before I learn that they rarely happen to give me the chance to say what I would like to say, that probably wouldn’t have the results that I anticipated anyway?
19. I don’t really want free “gifts,” so why do I even dream about them. It might have a lot to do with how I define “free” and “gifts,” knowing very well that the three greatest gifts of life, love and free-will are all free.
20. I am making some good progress when I catch myself not following or applying my own best advice; I am really making progress when I stop giving it.
21. Expectations ruin experience but they are hard to not have; but just like the ideal of unconditional love, the difficulty of succeeding doesn’t mean we should give up.
22. Knowing what to quit and what not to quit has always been hard for me; I guess part of the solution is recognizing the point of no return before it comes and goes.
23. Why don’t schools teach kids how to communicate with others to get along better? Is this something we have to fail at miserably before we are willing to listen and learn? In other words, is the normal sequence of learning darkness to know light a fundamental requirement of living or is that something we can change?
24. Words are our worst enemy and ally all in one. They create annoying problems and destructive differences on the one hand, while creating pleasant solutions and productive similarities on the other hand. By the way what do “hands” have to do with it?
25. There is great relief in acknowledging the wisdom of insecurity—being able to accept and admit your failures, inadequacies, shortcomings and ‘sins;’ and those admissions usually leave you with a strange sense of security. Maybe the weight of the falsely assumed burden consumes your security?
26. How many walls, problems and obstacles do I imagine into being with my mind and then worry about in my heart only to have to experience them in my soul. I suppose it is all in having patience in learning a lesson of the good that can come out of pain.
27. It is probably best to wear gloves, have on long pants and shirt sleeves, bring a step stool and large bucket and use loppers when picking blackberries. Plus have plenty of flat pans and room in your freezer.
28. Printers are worth fixing but only sometimes; It depends upon how old they are and what is wrong with them.
29. A meal eaten alone that costs less than you expect always seems to taste better afterwards, unless you just don’t have to count pennies when you are dining with a friend.
30. Your conscience is your only reliable guide; it is a walkie-talkie between your head and heart that can only be heard when you stop talking and start listening.



William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue, WA. He is author of several books including You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too and The Bow-Wow Secrets: How Dogs Live Simple Lives & People Don’t. Bill can be reached at bcottringer.pssp.net or (425) 454-5011 for comments and questions, especially in regards to this article.