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Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Have Your Tenets Become Unwanted Tenants?

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.
2) "Good, better, best. We never let it rest. Until our good is better and our better best."
  • 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.
3) "Fail to prepare, prepare to fail."
  • 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!)
4) My personal favourite:  "Cathy, that's pretty good for you..."
  • 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 :-)
5) "My special "little" people"
  • 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 :-)
What tenets are you following without even noticing.  What can you do to evict them if they have actually become unwanted tenants?  Only you know the answer...

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