Shit will happen. It’ll happen to you, the ones you love, and even those you don’t care that much about. It happens to everyone. Nobody wants it to happen to them but it does. You can either live your life constantly thinking about the shit that’s happened to you and the shit that’s going to happen to you or you can take back control of the situation. How? Own your reaction.
I’m reading, well listening to, an incredible book that I highly recommend called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. In it, the author spends some time on this topic of how you react when things happen to you. He notes that you can’t control what happens to you, all you can do is control your reaction.
Think of the last time something happened to you that made you feel like shit. Better yet, think of something that you hoped would happen but it didn’t and then you felt like shit. Those moments happen constantly. You thought you’d get the grade you wanted, the job or promotion you wanted, the guy or girl you wanted but for whatever reason you didn’t. You probably felt sad, rejected, probably anxious about what’s going to happen next.
These feelings, they are a reaction to something that’s happened to you. Whether what happened was completely outside of your control or not doesn’t really matter. Once things have begun to happen, the outcome is generally out of your control. The only thing you do have control over is how you react because no matter what, no matter how bad things get, you can always alter your perception and as such, your emotional reaction.
How empowering is that?! I mean not to sound like a hippy or anything but damn. If you had the same reaction I did when I first read, (er heard via Audible) these words in that book then you should be feeling empowered. Shit is going to happen to you, sometimes because of your past actions and other times entirely out of your control. Instead of letting your emotions get the best of you both before the shit happens and after, you simply need to train yourself to react how you want or need to.
Simple…right?
Whether this is obvious to you or not, it wasn’t to me for a long time. I’ve only just recently become aware of this. Soon after I swiftly came to the realization that this isn’t the sort of thing where you flip a switch and you’re in complete control. This is going to take time and a whole lot of patience with yourself and the world at large.
The thing is, nothing that happens to us has inherent meaning. We give it meaning by deciding that a demotion is negative and a promotion is positive. They don’t have to be but we decide that they are. Sometimes a lot of people decide it’s a good thing and so we follow along. Sometimes a lot of people decide it’s a bad thing and we follow that too, but there’s really nothing stopping you from flipping the switch and saying, screw what most people think or even what I might think, this doesn’t have to be this way. What if a demotion is a sign that you need to switch careers? What if a promotion means you don’t get to spend as much time with your family? I’m not telling you how to feel, I’m just saying that you don’t have to feel the way your mind is inherently telling you to feel. You can change that.
I wrote something a few weeks ago about loneliness. I talked about how it makes you feel. I’m now realizing that part of learning to be lonely is training yourself not to react negatively to loneliness. To recognize all that is good in your life, the people, experiences, and opportunities that have happened and will happen. This involves stopping your mind from going to sad and painful places both in the past and the future. This isn’t easy. I’m still really bad at it but you know what they say, the first step towards solving your problems is recognizing you’ve got em.
Once again, I leave you with not much in the form of direction, but at least we’re all on the same page. I have a feeling that I’m one step closer towards becoming a better person for myself and the people I surround myself with. Hopefully you do too.
As always, if you have some thoughts on this or insights to share, please leave them in the comments. This is going to grow, somehow, into something useful that I’ll probably work on, alone for the time being. If you want to share something more personal, send it my way: ninastepanov@gmail.com
