Things happen. Bad things. Sometimes they happen to us. Rejections, embarrassments, muggings, accidents, many negative external events can affect our lives. Sometimes events like these can take us off our paths and make our lives miserable.
I’m going to be blunt: In my experience, the most important thing that you can do in situations like these is to ask yourself the following question: What are you going to do about it?
Why? Because negative external events affect us in two ways:
Firstly, they affect us through the consequences of the negative event itself: A lost loved one, stolen money, embarrassment from being rejected in public, and so on…
Secondly, and most importantly, negative events can have a severe impact on our psyche, our minds and our emotions.
Some people have thin skins. We become angry very easily, or sad, or dejected. We let other people bring us down. See, if you go into an internal dialogue with yourself and start asking questions like
“Why did this happen to me?”
“Why did I blow it?”
“How could she/he do this to me?”
“Why do these things always happen to me?”
then you’re dragging yourself down into the mud. You’re letting people affect you. You’re getting down on yourself because you didn’t do the best thing you could have done in a given situation.
But, like I said, things happen, and we can’t always be perfect in our responses. Life is a process and people make mistakes. I’ve fallen into the trap of becoming dejected quite a few times; it is not worth it.
So… What to do? Well, whenever you notice yourself getting down emotionally and mentally think what are you going to DO about your life and don’t analyze the past. The key here is to change your focus. If you focus on a solution rather than dwelling on the past when something bad happens, you immediately shift your attention to finding a course of action that will give you a better outcome.
Changing your focus is one of the keys to self-improvement. Try it: Instead of focusing on negativity, focus on how to make small improvements in your life every single day and on how to deal with events in a better way. Then expand this principle to the rest of your life. See it as a game. Play with different options.
You can’t get a girlfriend? What are you going to do about it?
You were mugged on your way home after a concert? What are you going to do about it, now?
One great way to deal with negative events is to see them as lessons. Learn something from everything that happens in your life, good or bad. Even when something really terrible happens, there might be a valuable lesson in the experience.
By living like this, you become more powerful. You become less of a victim. You transform yourself into someone who can deal with things. You become capable. You become happier.
Some people become destroyed and their lives go down the drain when something horrible happens in their lives. Others find the strength to carry on, rebuild and create the life of their dreams. What is the difference between these two?
It’s what they choose to focus on.