dad’s funeral service<\/a> to pay their respects that day… something like that really sticks in your mind.<\/p>\nIt drove home for me, my family, and anyone else who was there, just how powerful an effect he’d had on the people he touched while we was alive.<\/p>\n
My dad wasn’t the one you’d see down on the pub on a Friday night, he wasn’t out playing cards with the lads, and he was never to be found gossiping and talking behind other peoples’ backs.<\/p>\n
He did his thing, got on with it, and was happy to do so. He concerned himself with\u00a0making meaningful relationships with people that mattered to him – people that returned the favour.<\/p>\n
He learned the lesson early that you can’t please all of the people all of the time, you can only be who you are, and that should\u00a0be enough for anyone. For those people for whom it wasn’t enough, well that was okay too.<\/p>\n
It’s the perfect example of simply being comfortable with yourself and sharing that with other people, accepting judgments as they arose and not wobbling over in self-doubt, and shifting\u00a0with the changing tides.<\/p>\n
Be who you are and stop making excuses for yourself.<\/p>\n
Stand strong: soft\u00a0feet and firm\u00a0legs<\/h2>\n
My dad held such\u00a0a firm\u00a0belief system that, no matter where you positioned yourself alongside it, it would give you cause you question yourself because he was so utterly convinced of it.<\/p>\n
Not arrogantly convinced, not at all. In fact, we both had many conversations about the beliefs\u00a0we held – he had his position, and I had mine.<\/p>\n
He stood firm because he had thought it all through. He’d questioned it through-out, raised and discarded doubts, contemplated on it, and was ultimately secure in his thoughts and the beliefs he’d reached, since they’d been tested and scrutinized.<\/p>\n
It’s incredibly powerful to talk with someone so comfortable and sure of where he stands. It’s hard to shake someone so confident, but who is also willing to hear your perspective, and then contrast that against his own. Your different opinions are\u00a0welcomed, encouraged, but\u00a0never dismissed.<\/p>\n
His opinions were his opinion, they weren’t his identity, and so\u00a0he was never threatened by something new or different.<\/p>\n
It taught me to examine my beliefs where I can. To question them for faults, and\u00a0to ultimately be comfortable with the conclusions;\u00a0question things as much as you can, raise doubts, and accept\/discard them as appropriate. This approach prevents the gradual growth of arrogance which forms from deep feelings of insecurity, identifying with your beliefs, and fear of being told you’re wrong. If you’re comfortable with questioning either by yourself or others, and adapting\u00a0your position when you can no longer validate your opinions, arrogance can never take hold.<\/p>\n
So, the analogy of soft feet implies that you stand lightly in your position, ready to adjust and adapt, but you stand firm, keeping\u00a0yourself rooted when you’ve validated your current position.<\/p>\n
Act; Don’t React.<\/h2>\n
While on a trip with him several years back, he shared with me one of his approaches to discipline he would use\u00a0as a father to his children.<\/p>\n
Once he described it, it was obvious but I’d never really been aware of it until he said. And then I became acutely aware how much this approach is not practiced by many.<\/p>\n
He described how, wherever he could and he didn’t always succeed, he would never discipline\u00a0his children until he had calmed down long after an incident requiring it\u00a0had occurred.<\/p>\n
This meant two things:<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"http:\/\/paulgoodchild.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/greatest-man-that-ever-lived-300x225.jpg\")
Today is my dad’s birthday.<\/p>\n