This is a question I started to consider last week, thanks to Gretchen Rubin who discusses a somewhat similar idea in The Happiness Project. When I really mulled it over, I could think of several personal tenets that may have taken up roost for a little too long.
I like the definition of "tenet" as a deeply held position or belief. I also like the definition of "tenant" as a dweller within. As with real estate, some of our tenets do become tenants over time and most of the time they are not paying rent!
Here are a few of my lifelong tenets and my view on how they have influenced my approach to life:
1) "Wednesday's child is full of woe" - maybe you remember this children's verse..."Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace..."
- Somehow this little verse became ingrained in me at an early age. When I was younger, I always wondered why I couldn't have been born on a Monday - I would have liked to be "fair of face"
- As silly as it sounds, I actually think I may have tried to live up (or should it properly be live down) to this expectation. Funny how something so innocent can have an unintended consequence.
- I have my absolutely delightful and sweet Grade 2 teacher, Miss Harris, to thank for this gem which was posted to a bulletin board all year long. It's entirely possible that I am the only student from that class who even remembers that this was posted. But it has had a big, big impact on my entire life - school, work, home. Sometimes striving for perfection is actually a negative as I often have trouble recognizing when something is good enough.
- This rather ominous tenet came by way of my mother who still lives this as her personal credo every single day. This is no doubt exactly how I ended up working in the field of emergency management. However, on occasion, I am so exacting in my preparation for everything that I can completely zap the joy out an event by my never-ending quest for details-management - I may even have been described as a "control freak" by a brave few. (it may come as a shock to my family for me to admit this!)
- Thank-you, Mr. Gym Teacher, for this life-sucking statement made to me during mandatory golf lessons when I was in Grade 12. Not only did this one statement ensure that I would loathe golf for eternity (even though I own golf clubs), it effectively kept me from participating in all sports for about 25 years. I went from being decently athletic to believing I was a disaastrous failure in all things sports. Happily, I am mostly over it :-)
- Here is a lovely sounding little phrase that was repeated to me and 5 of my classmates pretty much every single day when I was in Grade 4 - see, these tenets really do become tenants! I was in a group of 6 kids who had been "accelerated", resulting in us going from Grade 2 to Grade 4. Our Grade 4 teacher, the marvellous Mrs. Wilcox, called us her "special little people" because we were a year younger than all of the other kids in the class. Well bless my boots but I actually believed that we were special, or at the very least, that I was special. You cannot imagine what a lifetime of disappointment has followed that deeply held belief - apparently, Mrs. Wilcox neglected to share my "specialness" with every person I met after Grade 4. It was years before I figured out why the other kids in the class were mean to us :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment