My Personal Philosophies: Helen Graham
Monday, 9th February 2009
Continuing the idea of replacing New Year's resolutions with personal philosophies, Helen Graham gives us four of her own.
My personal philosophies are less adventurous than most, but they’ve kept me going for over two decades so there must be something right about them. Four main points sum up what I live by:
- Moments of lunacy keep me sane; people spend so long suppressing desires to say things and do things that are socially inappropriate or unacceptably impulsive that sometimes you just have to have a moment of eccentricity.
...my philosophies have kept me going for over two decades so there must be something right about them
- Listen to what is said and question everything, not always aggressively or discourteously or even out loud, but take a deeper look. Why people do things can give an insight into who they are. What everybody else is doing and why can help a person to find and develop their own interests. It’s helped me find mine. It’s always worth looking deeper, for whatever purpose, whether you keep what you find to yourself or share it with the world.
- Don’t be too mature all the time, but take responsibility for commitments, especially those that impact on other people. If you’re going to take on a commitment, especially one where you have been lucky enough to be selected above other individuals, follow it through. Do the job the best you can. Don’t let the people who chose you regret their decision. On the flip side of the argument, don’t think you have to be infallible either, because nobody’s perfect and what I’ve seen is that if you work hard when things go right, people are more inclined to help you when things go wrong.
Don’t be too mature all the time, but take responsibility for commitments
- Sometimes stuff just happens; always remember this. This one concept works whatever you choose to do, whatever you say, and whatever transpires. I try to remember that even if people blame me for these problems, as long as I can look back at my actions and be sure I did the right thing, their opinions shouldn’t bother me.
As clichéd and simple as these ideas are, I’ve always found them useful. I firmly believe I will continue to, too.
