Be Mindful Of What You Give Power In Your Life.

You’re the captain of your own ship.

Anytime something I consider huge or strange happens to me, especially when it isn’t how I thought things would play out, I always feel like my world is over. I always feel like all I’ve worked for and spent so much time and effort was a waste, yunno. That dreadful feeling of being a failure.

This happened to me recently when I failed a major exam. I wrote an entire story about it and how I dealt with it in the early stages titled: “Dealing With Failure. How To Overcome The Voices In Your Head”.

For the first few weeks, I didn’t accept that this had happened to me. That I had failed. So when anyone asks me, especially people who study the same course as me, I would lie and say I passed. I kept telling myself: “It’s for your good. They don’t matter anyway and to be honest, it’s none of their business if I passed or failed”. I failed to realize sooner rather than later that it wasn’t really about them. It was about me all along. The more people I lied to about failing, the more I went deep into denial. It almost started to feel like I had healed from it because I had refused to accept it and own it for myself.

Yes, I failed the exam. Yes, I will repeat the entire academic session. Big deal! I came to realize that things only hurt us so much or bring us down so much because we have given it the power to.

Photo by Nadir sYzYgY on Unsplash

Let’s take a look at a scenario with two types of friends each person has in their life or must have encountered at one point or another. We all have that one person who we rate so highly, either friend or family member. We shall address them as A. On the other hand, we also have random people in our lives, some of which are just acquaintances and some of which are friends who aren’t actively involved in our lives. we shall address them as B. When A doesn’t show up to our graduation/birthday party/wedding or whatever special day it is, or when A betrays us, it hurts so much more than when B does it. When B does it, it seems more like an: “I didn’t expect more from B” type of situation, therefore the pain is less.

This is because we have placed A at a high table in our lives that we expect so much from them and when they do the opposite of what we expect, it hurts a lot. When we give things the kind of power in our lives that we gave to A, we realize that we don’t have any control over our own lives anymore. We become controlled by these situations or these people and our happiness or sadness now our own lives or even mere passengers when we are supposed to be the captains.

I gave passing that exam so much power that it wrecked my mental health for weeks. I also gave some other people power by caring what they’ll think of me. This made me remain in denial of what had happened. Smiling, yet I’m dying inside. I have three tips id like to share when it comes to taking away all of that power.

• OWN IT! no matter what might have happened, acceptance is the first step to overcoming it and taking away its power to make you feel less than. Whether a breakup or losing a job, own it. It happened, not a big deal.

freedom begins with owning your flaws and disowning your fears -Umair Hague

• LET GO. this might be a hard one. You have to understand that the more you bottle up all of that anger, thinking of how and why this happened to you, the more it sits heavy on your chest. Take deep breaths and let go.

you can’t move forward if you’re still hanging on, — Sue Fitzmaurice

• MOVE ON. moving on isn’t just forgetting what happened, it also means you take the lessons you learned from your previous experience and think of ways you can do things better. More like re-strategizing and coming up with ways to live happier.

I am a novice when it comes to things like this. I hope this helps you as much as it has helped me.

Originally published at https://byrslf.co on August 15, 2021.