Having just gone through a slew of birthdays (mine and my dad included), I’ve discovered another tendon important to maturing in life. Auto correct. You may have read this elsewhere in this kind of phrase “pay attention to the little voice in your head” but I think it’s really larger than that.

There comes a moment in your life when you’ve got to give yourself a little credit on first impulse. Everything that has come to past in your life has lead you to this moment so sometimes, your first reaction is correct. Yet it seems we are taught to second guess our first reaction just in case it’s incorrect. Even if it is incorrect, sometimes it is incorrect for a reason. It’s to auto correct you.

I’ll give an example:

The other day, someone asked if I was okay because there were a couple of things I was doing that fell through the cracks. This is a normal question of course because I pride myself on my work. But this person was also witness to some of the reasons behind this crack falling episode I had (actually just two things that went left of center but not two major things) that were including but not limited to a bank fraud on my account, a tire with a nail in it, that woman monthly visitor, some crazy work stuff and a low immune system. My initial reaction was to be who I was and say outright why I was acting the way I was acting. Without an attitude but definitely with perplexion because this person was a witness to said things. In the past, I would have tried to cut myself around the idea of being nice as opposed to calmly truthful. I would have shucked and jived my way into making the situation comfortable as opposed to letting it happen. I’m not saying that I didn’t think about my actions over and over again after my response. What I am saying is that I don’t regret how I responded because somewhere I autocorrected myself without realizing it. Something in me needed to be me at that moment and not listen to the fears, expectations, proper blah blah that we are taught to layer over our own feelings. Feeling what you feel is just as important as understanding where someone else is coming from. In fact, it should give color to all other things that relate to relating to other people.

This is a tangent but then most of my posts are because they are coming from my own experience as I navigate the art of autocorrection and hashing out my life without “putting all my business in the street” (I’ve been accused of that before).

The purpose of this though is to acknowledge that my thirty some odd years have lead me to unconscious lessons that have benefited me in areas where I don’t have to overthink anymore. Think of Neo in the Matrix when dodging bullets. He was not sitting there contemplating the bullets so much as he listened to his own rhythm. I’ll not tell you this works ALL the time but I can tell you that sometimes it’s just what you need to do to be you.