Good things come to those who wait ....

 ... Rubbish.  Good things come to those who 

work hard to achieve what they want in life!

When you only look at something on the surface, it can often seem like it's effortless, easy, that someone has it all, been extremely lucky, whatever you want to call it.  What lurks beneath the surface is a whole different story.

Someone who I 'exited' from my life a long time ago (No, not in a buried under the patio kind of way!) often used the phrase "oh it's alright for you / him / her / them".  I grew to hate that phrase with a passion, it's so judgemental and it makes my stomach turn even to this day when I hear it.  Yes, you can have moments of 'luck' during your life and we've all been in the right place, at the right time and something amazing has happened but no doubt you worked hard to actually put yourself in that position in the first place.

At the age of 50, I'm finally a homeowner again and back on the property ladder but it's been a long journey to get here.  When I sold my first house which I bought with my ex-husband in my early twenties, I was going through a difficult divorce, it was just prior to the housing boom and I walked away from that house and relationship with my clothes, my car and barely a penny to my name.  I promised myself I'd never put myself in that position again, and I worked hard to achieve just that.  So when me and Mr Bob cracked open the champagne last night to finally celebrate our new house, it felt like a very monumental occasion.  It hadn't felt like the right time amidst all the chaos of decoration and renovation but as we looked around us yesterday and saw all the hard work we had done, it most definitely felt right.

"It's alright for you" - I've had people say that to me many times over the years, especially in relation to fitness.  The fact is that I work hard, every single day, to maintain my fitness, it doesn't happen by magic.  It's the very same reason why people become successful in anything they do, they work damn hard yet the judgemental amongst us think it 'just happened'.  The truth is that we're all prone to being judgemental yet we hate it when people do it to us.  So how can we stop ourselves and look that little bit deeper than the surface.

How to be less judgemental

• If you catch yourself being judgemental, pause and ask yourself why you feel the need to be judgemental.  Most of the time it comes down to jealousy, envy and being annoyed with ourselves and our own lives.  How many times have you gossiped about someone else but deep down it's because they're doing something that you've not had the guts to do?  Be honest.
• What triggers your judgemental thoughts?  Is it when you are feeling particularly vulnerable yourself?  When we're in a good place mentally with ourselves, it's easy to let things wash over us.  That's not the case when we're feeling less confident and it's natural to feel like the whole world is against us.  Judging others is a protection mechanism when we're feeling vulnerable so that we judge them before they can judge us.
• Stop and think about others' situations before immediately jumping to conclusions.  That good friend of yours who recently got promoted, you were with them every step of the way whilst they grafted away remember, it wasn't overnight success.  Use that same thought pattern when talking to or watching other people.
• Push yourself out of your comfort zone by speaking to different people, listening to and watching things you wouldn't normally.  It's natural to think that everyone is the same as us, they're not.  We go through life being very biased towards things that we grew up with and the people we mixed with.  When we take the time to look at the world around us in a different way, we develop a better understanding of things and, in time, learn to be less judgemental.

Don't be judgemental of yourself either.  It's easy to think 'oh well, I was just lucky that's all'.  No, you create your own luck and you worked hard for what you have achieved in your life and, if you haven't got there yet then focus less on others and more on yourself in order to do just that.

#2020