Dear LPG,

The other day I was on the way to see a friend, I suppose that I am quite lucky because I can still drive at my age which really does make getting out and about a bit safer in the world we have lived in for the past two years or so.

I can get to see my friends and do my shopping under my own steam now that we are not totally locked down, but there is something that I do every now and then while I am driving which I have noticed that a lot of other people do too.

Have you ever found you’re in front of a traffic queue when the traffic lights go red? It is annoying because any driver will tell you that it is as if whenever that happens, all the traffic lights up the street will be perfectly timed so that if you are caught by one set, you will be caught by every set as you drive up the road.  Not only that, you are more than likely to be caught at nearly every set you come to all the way up the road and you will be caught at the front of the queue every time.  

Then there is that thing where you are at the traffic lights at the front of one of the two rows of cars waiting to go forwards, the lights go green but the car beside you does not move off.  You start to but then stop because, in your head you have decided that there must be something wrong that the neighbouring driver has noticed and that you haven’t which is why that car is still stationary. 

That happens to me in so many walks of life; I plan to wear one outfit to an event well in advance but then, I get ready and take one last look in the mirror only to find my reflection telling me that I can’t possibly wear that, so I change and then I am late; or I spend a lot of money on a present but then when wrapping it, I start to worry about what the person I bought it for will think when theY receive it. Should I stop or should I go; should I go with the first outfit, or should I change, should I send the present or get something else?

I have second guessed myself all my life and it causes me all sorts of stress.  I seem to really worry about what other people think of me based on the decisions I make.

You would think that by now I should have learned to own my decisions and stand by them, but even in retirement I am still preoccupied with what the world thinks about me.  I have a feeling that I am not alone in this and after asking for lots of friends’ advice, I have found some internet lessons on how to stop.  So I am asking LPG to pass them on for anyone else who has my little problem. 

I think that the most important lesson I have learned is that it is OK not to be right all the time and my New Year’s Resolution for 2022 will be to put that thought into practice whenever I find myself in a second guessing situation in future…

NM. Bellingham. 

NM offers some advice she has found that might help anyone who feels the pressures of the problem that she describes…

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