The Evolution of an Individual.

The evolution of people is fascinating.  I don’t mean people as a species over millions of years.  No, I mean individual people over decades or just a few years.  I mean me.

I left school as an almost sixteen-year-old to take a building apprenticeship that I kind of got by accident, and I only wanted as a way to get me away from the boredom of school.  I did not like school one little bit, I had no intention of learning anything, and to my teachers I was just a pest, so it was certainly a good move for me at the time to get out of there.

I completed my apprenticeship and became a qualified builder, a trade I continued on with for a few more years, but as I grew and evolved to realize that I would be crazy to continue my life working in a job that was so physically demanding, I decided that there must be something better for me.

With limited knowledge of anything outside of construction, I felt stuck within the industry so I progressed myself the best way I saw available to me, and I moved into project management and the development of communities.  This satisfied me to a certain level, though still felt inadequate.

Moving on to me today, I look back and think of how very different I am now to how I was when I abandoned school seventeen years ago.  I’m barely the same person, and the biggest change in me seems to have happened over only the last few years.

During this time I have changed the kind of people I spend my time with, which may be largely due to the change of work environment, but either way there is a huge benefit when you decide which of your friends are losers, and get them the hell out of your life.

I now read a lot of books.  I mean a lot, I have almost completely given up TV in favor of books.

I have also been influenced by listening to some very interesting and thought provoking podcasts that helped me find ways to optimize myself.

I began writing a couple of years ago.  To begin with, it was exclusively fiction writing, which I quite enjoy.  Then more recently I have been doing more of a journal type of writing, which I use as a way to find my thoughts.

I became extremely curious about the universe in general, which culminated in me starting an online university degree last year.

The final thing that caused a significant change in me, the most significant by far, was my young daughter become unwell with cancer.

As I went through this evolution, I gradually began to think about different things, more meaningful things, and just thought more in general.  I became much more organized, much more precise with everything, and began to constantly want to know how and why everything happened.

But the most beneficial change that I have experienced is in a new found hierarchy of what is important to me, and more specifically what has the potential to negatively impact my mood.  Now, it is a very short list of things that are able to do this.  A few years ago, I would get all stressed out about money, bills, works, my wife’s ridiculous dramas about her gossiping friends, all sorts of things.  But in the years since my young daughter was diagnosed with cancer, the revised hierarchy is as follows; 1. The wellbeing of my family, that’s it, there is nothing else, nothing else bothers me.  Though still with a lot to worry about regarding the health of my family, I am very much at peace most of the time, and it’s to a level that I have not been able to see in other people.

A perfect example of this was a couple of months ago when a colleague and I walked into the airport car park after arriving back from a trip away for a conference, and we got to where we thought that I had parked my car, and it was not there.  We stood there puzzled, certain that I had left it in that exact spot, my mate was freaking out about it, panicking that someone had stolen it.  My comment to him was “Well I guess I don’t have a car anymore.  Let’s go get some food.”  I just didn’t care, they still make them.  (It turned out that we were on the level below where I had parked it, but the point remains valid)

I have also gained a new understanding and control of myself and my emotions.  I can easily stop myself if I’m getting frustrated or annoyed at something, and examine and analyze myself.  This often leads to telling myself that I’m being unreasonable, stubborn, not thinking of it from the other person’s perspective, or something simular, and I just unwind myself and reset.

This combination of incredible changes has provided a feeling of enlightenment that has left me with never before felt confidence.  I feel like I can do absolutely anything that I want to, and I will succeed.  It’s an odd feeling, I just feel like I am free to do whatever makes me happy at the time.  Most of it is just an extreme confidence that I will find a way to make things happen, and partly an irrational sense that if I want something bad enough and I do everything I can to get myself to it, the universe will get out of my way.

Is your evolution this powerful to you?