I’m writing this a little dozy after a late night at the Bruce Springsteen concert at Stadium of Light, Sunderland. I’ll be honest – I’m no Bruce fan, I’m not one for gigs in huge stadiums, and the weather forecast was horrendous. The tickets were a gift to Mr B who’s a fan and I got dragged along.
Long story short: I didn’t want to go; I moaned about it a lot; I had an amazing time and absolutely loved it. And it made me ponder…
It’s so easy to write things off without giving them a go, making presumptions of how something will be (“I’m not going to like that”, “that’s not for me”, “it’s not worth it”).
(and BTW, I’ve seen Bruce at Sunderland before but for some reason last night was something different – note to self, even if it’s something you’ve done before, that doesn’t mean it will be the same)
To focus only on what we’ll have to do, or give up (the parking, the crowds, the rain, the 3 hours+ of pretty unknown songs, my warm and cosy night in) rather than what we’ll get from saying yes.
(For me at Bruce, I was entranced by Bruce’s skills, energised by being amongst 45,000 people singing, dancing and having fun, and inspired by musicians in their 70s still be at the top of the game.)
And yes, today I’m tired. And many of things I thought would be the experience came true – the traffic was horrendous, it was freezing cold and raining, we got stuck in large crowds at times. But the overriding feeling now is one of joy and inspiration, with fab memories of a great night with people I love.
One other thing…
I was very aware someone had bought my ticket and I wanted to show some enthusiasm. And so I was more engaged than perhaps I would have been otherwise. And I think this created a positive spiral of freedom and enjoyment, for me and even those around me.
I just leave that with you. Might just be me, but if you too find yourself saying no, writing things off, or being a reluctant participant at times, then perhaps there’s something here to ponder too.
And if you want to know what you can do about it, there’s lot of hints in the blog I wrote some time ago (which also explains what is often going on when our brains tell us it’s not what we want). Check it out here.
