Optimism, Migraines, Mangoes and Rose Colored Glasses

Weird post title right? Well they actually all tie in together.

Let me explain. For most of my life one of the most frequent insults people have thrown my way (both friends and foes alike) is to take off my rose colored glasses. The euphamism is of course intended as a way of telling me I am often not being realistic or that I am too idealistic.

I however consider myself to be a realistic optimist. My for instance has always been I'm realistic enough to know that planes crash but optimistic enough to believe I'll survive if I'm ever on one that does. See what I mean? And I'll always hope for things like world peace, the end of racism and other global issues. It doesn't mean I believe we'll actually achieve them 100% but I can't help myself from hoping that we can improve upon them.

Photoshopped image of what I think my lenses are going to look like.

In my day to day life it boils down to this: Do I become more suspicious and less trusting of people and their intentions and assume they are out to get me or harm me in some manner or do I continue to assume goodwill and that lack of information is the cause of most misunderstandings?

I have always adopted the latter response when conflict arises. Even now in business I and many of my colleagues are often faced with someone stepping on our toes, insulting us, violating us in some manner that usually has to do with copyrights or trademarks, or just out and out gossiping in a manner that can cause harm.

I am often asked the question of how would I respond to these situations, and my answer is always the same: I assume goodwill and that the person accidently or unknowingly violated me in a manner that they just didn't understand they were causing me harm and maybe if I approach them with kindness rather then hostility we will both be happy with the end result.

The problem with approaching anyone from a point of anger or hostility is that the other person immediately becomes defensive. Once anyone's defenses are up it's harder to get them to see your side of things and much less likely that they will relent their position because it is often a knee jerk reaction to not want to be wrong.

If goodwill and diplomacy don't work you can always get tough and take legal action if needed. Personally if I don't feel an issue warrants legal action then I just walk away. Seriously, life is too short to waste your time and energy dealing with someone who lacks character in your personal or professional life by prolonging your relationship with them. In my little world it's really that simple :)

So here's the funny part. I have suffered from migraine headaches for years. The other night I was on Google and began searching for ways to relieve one of my migraine triggers which is photophobia. While I am afraid of (hate) having my picture taken, photophobia actually means you are extremely sensitive to light. Natural daylight is fine for me, fluorescent light can be a problem. My other problem is with how something is lit. If I am talking to you and you are backlit by say a window or a bright light at night... That glare or back lighting will cause me to get a migraine. So now when I go to restaurants I always sit facing in towards a wall instead of facing outwards towards a window.

A cure for this? Uh huh... You guessed it: Rose Colored Glasses

It's something about my eyes receiving too much blue light so the pink tinted glasses will balance and cancel out the blue. Who knew? My GP never mentioned them even though he knew about my photophobia induced headaches. I don't have to wear them all of the time, just when my eyes start to be bothered by a light source.

So those are my new glasses with 3x pink tint and non-glare coating on the front and back of each lens. I ordered them yesterday when I made my first ever trip to the eye doctor. I am going to look so nerdy.

I had also noticed that in the past few months I am becoming far-sighted. Bummer, that's age biting me in the butt. All in all my eyes are apparently in phenomenal condition. I currently have 20/20 vision so I don't know what it was before my close range vision started to go.


Seriously, the technician told me my eyes are in remarkably good shape and even asked if I eat a lot of carrots. I told him I eat mangoes because they are higher in vitamin A :) My favorites are the Trader Joes unsweetened and unsulfured dried Just Mango Slices and Odwalla Mango Tango smoothies.

So all in all it's pretty darn funny to me that people have always told me I need to "Take off your rose colored spectacles" and now, I'll really be wearing them both physically and metaphorically :)