Should Have...

How many times a day do you say to yourself "I should...."?  What I'm talking about is all those times the voice in your head says "I should have done....", or "I should have said....", or "I should be....".  Now just maybe this is not a regular conversation you have with yourself, but if you are like me, then until you think about it you may not realise exactly how many times these thoughts go through your head.  And when they go through your head, what does it do to you?  Does it make you feel inadequate, or less than you think you should be?   Does it result in you feeling anxious or stressed at all?  So why do we do this to ourselves, because let's face it, we are doing it to ourselves.

Who are you comparing yourself to when you think you should have done something better?  Who do you think is judging you and your actions each day? I'm not talking on a spiritual level here, because that's a different conversation entirely.  It doesn't really matter what the source is, whether it stems from a need to please our parents and have their approval, or a need to feel that you are as good a mum/wife/friend as other people you know, or think you know.  I have my reasons for thinking the way that I do, but here's the thing, we have no idea what other people are really thinking of us.  We do not live in their homes and we are not inside their heads, so even though we may take a guess at or make assumptions about what other people may think of us, then unless they have said something straight to our face and in complete honesty, we just don't know.  So why waste time and energy on worrying about what anyone else may or may not think about you, because in all likelihood it will not be accurate.

Did you know there is a name for these thoughts?  They are called automatic negative thoughts.  They pop into your head before you have time to stop them, and they happen a lot without you realising how often unless you make yourself aware of them. That's all well and good knowing they have a name, but how do you stop them?  How do you stop the self criticism and judgement?  How often has someone said to you "don't be so hard on yourself", and how often have you thought that it's easier said than done and not really paid any attention to the advice?  I know I have.  Last year someone told me to have self compassion.  This changed things for me.  It was saying the same thing as "don't be so hard on yourself", but it was different somehow.  It went deeper and made more sense.  It clicked with me when nothing else had.  The next step is to challenge our automatic negative thoughts.  Ask why you are having those thoughts.  What could you do to change those thoughts and how can you change the outcome?  This can be exhausting at first because you find yourself questioning everything you do because until now you hadn't realised how many of these thoughts you have on a daily basis.  But I can assure you that it gets easier and quicker once you get into the swing of it.  The answers come more easily.  Stop yourself when you can hear the "what ifs" and "I shoulds" creeping in and change it to a positive.

If a friend came to you and told you how bad they were feeling about themselves, what would you say to them?  I'm sure you would be supportive and try and remind them of all the positive things they have done.  All the things they are good at, or how much progress they had made with something.  Have you ever thought of doing that for yourself?  You can you know.  Be your own therapist.  Tell yourself the things you would tell your friend.  It works.

I used to worry endlessly and spend many hours replaying in my mind things that I had done or said and coming up with what I wished had happened instead of what did happen.  But I don't do that any more.  I have learnt that if a situation doesn't go the way that I hoped or wanted, then I quickly review it and decide to do it differently next time, and that's the end of the conversation I have with myself. I have also learnt that if something doesn't go right, then it's not always my fault and that other people also have their own issues and don't always behave in a way that makes it easy for me to achieve what I want to achieve.  Learning this was also a pretty big step for me as up until recently I always assumed that everything that went wrong was down to me because it must have been my fault that someone else behaved the way they did.  It must have been what I said or my tone of voice, but actually, some people just don't listen properly no matter what you do. 

Here's another thing that has helped me over the last year.  Everyone is an individual and you have to respect that and let them be who they are.  Now, you may be saying "I know that, it's obvious, I learnt that years ago".  Well I'm admitting that I don't think I really did learn that before now.  Not to the point where I can now look at other peoples' behaviour and genuinely think that I don't know why they behave the way they do or say the things they do or why they live their life in a particular way, and I don't need to know why because I don't know what has shaped them, I just need to be happy with my behaviour towards them.

I was having a conversation with someone the other day, and we ended up talking about whether we felt like a grown up yet.  I told them that although I don't feel like a grown up, I do finally feel different than I used to do.  I started to say something, and they thought they knew what I was going to say and ended my sentence for me.  I then told them what I had actually been going to say.  This conversation was another reminder to me that whenever we think we know what is going on in someone else's head, then really we don't.

So why am I waffling on about all this stuff in my blog today?  To be honest, I don't really know.  I just felt I had to after a few conversations I had had with people recently.  None of this stuff is original thought.  I haven't come to these conclusions myself.  I had to be taught these things because I had got to a stage where I  really needed to learn them.  Up until recently I had not really paid any attention to things like this because I figured I was a fairly intelligent person so I should be able to work things out for myself.  But if you look at that last sentence, this was part of the problem.  Notice the use of the term I should.  This was me judging myself for not being able to sort out my own issues.  I had to learn that it is possible to change the voices in my head and it wasn't all down to me to do it, because someone else had more answers than me and they could help me.

Do I get it right all the time now? No, of course not.  I am still a work in progress; a masterpiece that is not yet finished; a symphony that is still being written.

Candycopia

On our route into town we pass a row of new business units, one of which is still up for rent.  Back in January when we were driving past we started talking about what kind of business could rent the final unit and do well considering what was already there.  It was just a conversation for the sake of it.

A couple of weeks later on Valentines day I was sitting at home messing around on my laptop and waiting for Robert, when he burst into the living room, knelt down in front of me and said "you know that unit that's up for rent?  Well I rang the letting agent about it, and it's too expensive, but there is another shop for rent in Clitheroe that's not too expensive.  What do you think?"  My initial reaction was "Are you totally insane, don't be ridiculous, going into business is far too risky, you know I like the stability of a regular wage at the end of the month and what on earth kind of business would it be" I should hasten to add that this was all in my head, and a very watered down version actually came out of my mouth a few seconds later. In fact, what I just typed is probably also a watered down version of what really went through my mind in those moments before I spoke.

We didn't have any plans for a romantic Valentines day, and after getting a take away meal, we spent the evening going through possible business ideas.  By the end of the night we had decided on an old fashioned sweet shop.  Let's face it, neither of us are strangers to sweets so we felt we had some expertise in this area.

Robert has always wanted to work for himself and with the voluntary redundancy package BT were offering, it finally seemed to be the right time to take that leap, so the next few weeks were spent researching and planning and making decisions.  We went to take a look at the empty shop four days later on our wedding anniversary.  It was located right opposite the sixth form centre in Clitheroe and was a decent size, but would need quite a bit of work to make it into what we wanted.  Robert met the owner and told him we wanted the lease.  The owner decided that he didn't want to rent to us as we were a new business, so within a day Robert had found another shop for rent, and it turned out that this one was in an even better location and would need much less work doing to it.  We applied for the lease and it was agreed, which is when things really took off.

Naming the business led to a few differences of opinion as to what did or did not sound right, and I even resorted to an on-line random business name generator.  Eventually Robert came out with Candycopia while driving to Manchester one afternoon, and this one stuck.  The sweet shop was named.  Most people seem to like the name, but I've had to explain it to a few people.  Choosing our colour scheme was fun, but didn't really take too long as aesthetics is something we usually agree on quite quickly.  The logo was also easy as last year we had a graphic designer work on a logo for another business idea that didn't get off the ground, but we were able to use elements of that one for the new business.

Because of Robert's job with BT selling advertising and eCommerce to businesses, he had a lot of contacts and knew just who to call on for help with everything we needed for the shop from the nuts and bolts like shelving to helium balloons for opening day, and if there was anything else we needed, we just searched on-line. The internet is an amazing tool.

It's fair to say the last few weeks have been hectic and stressful and at some points it felt like we were going to run out of time as we had decided on an opening day of 30th March, Easter Saturday.  There have been some long days and hard work.  We have been helped along the way by some friends and family which has been much appreciated.

My personal achievement was making the candy trees for the window display which I enjoyed and I have had some really nice comments about them.  People have even asked if I am going to make them to sell.

There was one day, I can't quite remember when, that it hit me that all this hard work and planning towards opening day was not the end, and that once that day was over with, we had to do it all again and again and the next day and the next.

The day before opening, I spent most of my time running around getting last minute things, while Robert and Katy and our wonderful helpers were at the shop loading stock onto the Epos system and putting it on the shelves.  It was 2am before we left that night, which was better than the 4am that someone had predicted, and we planned to be back by 7am to finish everything off before the big opening at 10.  I got three hours sleep, which quite frankly is an afternoon nap for me, not a full night's sleep, and I'm still trying to recover from the lack of sleep.

Robert's 92 year old nan was visiting from Southampton, and we had asked her to do the honours of cutting the ribbon.  Lots of family turned up for the big moment, and I would like to say right now how grateful I am that they were there to support us.  I really do appreciate it and I know it means so much to Robert too.

On the dot of 10am on Saturday 30th March, Candycopia opened for business.  In just six short weeks it had gone from an idea over dinner on Valentine's day, to reality.

There is still more to do, and ideas we have for expansion.  It's quite a journey we are on, and a new chapter in our lives, but hopefully it will have a very happy ending.