Mentality and Perspective
How often do we as Workers, as Friends, as Parents, and as Spouses find ourselves simply going through the motions? Reacting emotionally throughout life rather than acting out of intention? The difference between attaining our goals, and spinning our wheels both in the gym, and in life is the difference between how we choose to view our lives, ourselves, and our capabilities as humans. Every morning we open our eyes, walk out our front doors and start our day is a new opportunity to choose how our day is going to go. Obviously we can’t change what’s going to happen, but what we can change is the way that we react to it. What I mean by that is when inevitably not every aspect of life is going to go our way, we have two choices, to react in anger, negativity, think “why me” or “this is just my LUCK”. Thoughts like those take all of the power that you do hold within you, and gives it away, can you imagine what you could make of your life if you seized that power and thought, “what am I going to do next so this doesn’t happen again?” If you make a plan to shift your reactions towards things out of your control, you develop a sense of confidence and control of both yourself, and the situations you find yourself in that you can’t even imagine.
But HOW do we do this?
the answer lies within the question, so i’ll pose another, how do you breathe? how do you wake up every morning and get cook breakfast? you didn't learn how in an instant and you wont master this in an instant either. However, what you can do this instant is create an intention to learn and to grow towards mastering that ability throughout life and make a journey for yourself towards self discovery and improvement. there’s an age old adage who's history is ambiguous but powerful all the same, “How you do anything, is How you do everything.” This phrase specifically holds value here because how you react to one stressful situation, or decision in life is likely how you’ll react to every, stressful decision and situation in life, that is, until you take control of what you can. Fortunately all that makes anything, and everything in life “good” and “bad”, “incredible”, “horrible” and every other adjective you can muster is ALL that you CAN control. For reference I refer to the philosophy of Stoicism in which a pivotol sect of which is centred on exploring and finding your place in the world as a human, abiding by nature, and by one self, and discovering what you truly can control and how much you truly cant.
What is in your Power?
The Stoics believe that one of the few, if not only thing that you can control is your “judgements” and your thoughts. We like to believe that we shape our destiny, and we control our body, our situations, and our lives, that is until something takes that illusion away and all we’re left with is our thoughts on it. To clarify, all things good, bad, happy, confusing, depressing, really don’t exist outside of us declaring them so. Events, people, experiences are REAL, are ALIVE and ARE HAPPENING, any effect or emotion that they invoke in us is GIVEN to them BY US. Every microscopic moment of your life, the friends you've made, the words you’ve read up until this moment have devloped and carved your opinions and judgements on right and wrong, good and bad and thats exactly where your power comes back, thats exactly where as workers, friends, and spouses we can stop going through the motions and snap into the reality that WE create our lives from inside our minds, not the other way around.
Practice Intentionally adding Judgements to Life, Retake your Control
What all of this is leading up to is that the next time any event happens, macro or micro around you, allow your intention to be known that YOU dictate how you view an event, what your thoughts on it are, and how you will choose to respond to them. Remember that getting a promotion at work is only as HAPPY or Sad an event as your views on it allow, just as getting a flat tire is only as day ruining and upsetting as you view and allow it to be. Good and Bad is not black and white, as right and wrong is subject to perspective and opinion, continue your soul searching, turn over each and every rock under the sun to find your path and your beliefs and always retain your ability to shift your perspective, to evolve your mentality, and change your life, one experience at a time.
