{"id":2003,"date":"2018-06-03T11:13:39","date_gmt":"2018-06-03T15:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/?p=2003"},"modified":"2018-06-06T00:20:28","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T04:20:28","slug":"lessons-learned-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/03\/lessons-learned-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons Learned – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is painfully obvious that I\u2019m terrible at social media. I\u2019ve touched on my inept ability to blog, Facebook, or Twitter in my once every six-month random blog post. However, from time to time, the thought hits me \u2013 someone might actually be interested in what\u2019s going on with me. <\/em>Then I quietly chuckle to myself and move on with my life.<\/p>\n

Either way \u2013 while I\u2019m waiting on my Ubuntu 18.04 VM to clone (takes forever), I figured might as well write something. This post is about one of the greatest lessons I\u2019ve ever learned. We\u2019ve all had moments in our life where a friend, family member, religious zealot, animal, or educator taught us a lesson so profound \u2013 that it changed our lives.<\/p>\n

I know, we all are the sum of lessons we\u2019ve been taught. Because most folks are self-centered dill weeds so it\u2019s a fact that we always forget who taught us the specifics and why.\u00a0 Yet, we still exercise these lessons in everyday life. Let\u2019s take a real-life lesson that I learned when I was a young boy. I had a bobby pin and for some reason, in my tiny brain, it seemed like a good idea to put that little metal object into a 120v wall socket. I remember that very painful and traumatic experience vividly to this day.<\/p>\n

While that lesson, no doubt very important, it\u2019s not really in the scope of what I\u2019m trying to get across.<\/p>\n

Years ago, I went back to school to get my MBA. I was enrolled in one of the core business classes that had only six students. The professor walked in and we started the typical introductions everyone has during the first day of any class. His very first lesson was something of a life changer for me.<\/p>\n

His belief was that your feelings<\/em> are controlled by you and you alone. That if someone \u2018hurts\u2019 your feelings \u2013 that\u2019s on you. In a nutshell, he believed that if you allow someone to hurt your feelings or get under your skin \u2013 then you are giving that person control over you and that simply wasn\u2019t acceptable.<\/p>\n

At first, I thought, this guy was a loon.<\/p>\n

Then I realized he was right. I was going through a very stressful phase in my life. Like most married families with kids, you worry about everything you can\u2019t control, what people say, think, do, work, school, and news. To be honest, most shit really doesn\u2019t even matter.<\/p>\n

I made two life-changing decisions because of that class.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I realize that my span of control is indeed very small. I only worry about what\u2019s in my span of control not what\u2019s outside of it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    For example, what\u2019s out of my control is Target creating gender-neutral bathrooms. However, what I can control is where I spend my money. Which, isn\u2019t at Target anymore.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Ignore what anyone thinks or says about me.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Now, for the most part \u2013 this is almost an impossible task for most individuals. Thankfully, for my somewhat undiagnosed Asperger\u2019s this wasn\u2019t too hard for me to deal with. I just needed to frame it in a more logical manner.<\/p>\n

      Anyway, I found myself writing several more pages on this topic, which meant anyone who was reading to this point probably fell asleep.<\/p>\n

      In summary, don\u2019t sweat the small shit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      It is painfully obvious that I\u2019m terrible at social media. I\u2019ve touched on my inept ability to blog, Facebook, or Twitter in my once every six-month random blog post. However, from time to time, the thought hits me \u2013 someone might actually be interested in what\u2019s going on with me. Then I quietly chuckle to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2003"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2011,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003\/revisions\/2011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}