It’s everywhere. You are surrounded by it daily. It’s the basis of your existence. We all see it, experience it, and live it. Each breath can either be a testament to its beauty or its pain. Life is apparent in everything you do, and yet; what should be a joyful, amazing experience can often feel daunting, stressful, and overwhelming. The question is, how does the power of perspective and your mindset transform your life experiences?
What causes these feelings? Is it the circumstances themselves, or the people involved? Could it be your personal experiences and what you believe life to be, or does it stem from a particular mindset?
As with many things, life is just life. It’s there and it happens, and it’s neither good nor bad. Life is just an essence and energy. Just as money is neither good nor bad, it’s an energy agreed upon by a society and can be used in a just or nefarious fashion. Food is neither good nor bad, it’s merely energy needed by the body to survive but can be over-indulged in and can cause serious health problems.
Depending on the situation, the individual, the society, any of these things can have a higher, more noble purpose, or you can become enslaved to them as they turn into vices that seem to be out of your control.
Regarding your experience of life, your mindset determines whether your experience is “Good” or whether it’s “Bad”. However, “Good or Bad” are simply arbitrary metrics in which you attempt to describe your experiences.
What one individual considers to be a good or even a great experience can vary drastically when compared to another individual experiencing the same situation.
An easy example of this is a rollercoaster ride. Some people are filled with fear and trepidation and it doesn’t end until they exit the ride. Others line up and feel excitement and anticipation. The ride is the same regardless, it’s the mindset that determines the perceived reality of the ride being “Good” or it being “Bad”.
The same goes for life.
Life Just Is…There’s Nothing Else
We can regulate life down to our experiences all day long. However, your bad day might sound silly to someone else while their bad day doesn’t make sense to you.
This is because the lens you use to perceive the movement and flow of life around you varies from person to person.
Regardless, your thoughts are the determining factor of whether life is going your way or not. Too many people view life as a set of finite circumstances based on their personal experience, not realizing there are millions of people having completely different experiences, even though their circumstances may be very similar.
What’s the difference? It’s all in their thinking. Your thoughts determine the outcome of your experiences. In his book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill states,
“Every man is what he is because of the dominating thoughts which he permits to occupy his mind.”
– Napoleon Hill
If you go through a situation with a negative mindset, you will most likely have a more negative experience. If you go through with a positive mindset, you will most likely have a more positive experience.
In most instances, the experiences are neither good nor bad it just happens to be the life event you’re going through at that time.
This isn’t to say that there are no bad experiences or that there are no good experiences because that statement wouldn’t be true.
There are some experiences that people go through that are terrible and utterly horrific. There are some experiences that people go through that are completely amazing.
What we’re talking about here is the idea that in your day-to-day life, most of the experiences you have don’t fall into those categories.
However, you associate good or bad based on your belief in how that experience affects you, but that doesn’t mean you’re right.
I used to think this way all the time when I was trapped in depression. I just thought life sucked, and that everybody was miserable and hated life, but they were just really good at hiding it.
During that time, I felt as if there was nothing really good about being alive, but I was wrong. I was incorrect in my thinking.
Now, after having come out of depression, I can see that life has amazing, beautiful qualities associated with it. However, while I was depressed, I wasn’t able to see it this way.
To me, life was bad. Life was difficult, and it never turned out the way that I hoped it would.
I struggled a lot because I couldn’t move past this viewpoint. It seemed like no matter what I did I couldn’t really get ahead, but that doesn’t mean I was right.
My perspective about life was incorrect, and I know this because many people have had similar challenges but were able to handle them with much more grace than I did.
Instead of becoming bitter, they pushed through with a positive mindset and attitude because their outlook on life was more well-adjusted than mine. Maybe they were more emotionally intelligent. Who knows?
What I do know is they didn’t allow themselves to get bogged down with things like depression or anxiety, insecurity, or self-worthlessness among many other things. At least not to the extent I allowed it.
They handled the situations with more dignity and grace, had more confidence, felt more love for themselves and others, and believed that life was good, so the situations they experienced didn’t end up feeling as negative or “bad” to them.
It’s All in Your Mindset
This can be hard for some people to accept. It was hard for me to accept as I struggled with depression. I didn’t want to believe it because how could the way I felt be my fault, especially when I had no control over certain situations in my life?
What I didn’t understand was I had a choice in the matter. I could choose whether I wanted to allow my negative feelings to dictate how I perceived the world and related to it, or I could accept the circumstances and decide to move forward with a positive spirit.
Nowadays, when I face difficult situations or circumstances, I find that I can move through them with much more grace than I used to. It doesn’t mean I don’t react or respond negatively, because I still have those moments, but my ability to calm myself or put myself in the right state of mind is much easier than it used to be.
There’s no doubt some people are better at this than others, however, we all struggle with it to some degree.
Regardless of where you fall within the scale of emotional intelligence, I’m willing to bet something has happened in the fairly recent past where you wished you had handled a situation better than you did.
And that’s ok. You’re not alone. The question is, how long does it take you to return to your normal peaceful self? How long are you running the stress, anger, insecurity, fight or flight processes before returning to homeostasis?
Do you find yourself stuck for hours, days, weeks, or months seething over certain situations, or can you return to your peace quickly?
Being able to return quickly is determined by your mindset. You’re mindset and how you view life will determine whether you hold onto things far longer than you should rather than letting them go.
If you’re more prone to a negative mindset, it will probably take you longer because you haven’t fully taught yourself how to move through those situations with poise.
Wouldn’t it be nice to flow through life without holding onto the travesties you so desperately cling to? And why do you cling to them in the first place? It’s because they give you a sense of being. You’ve become so entangled in the thought processes and feelings that you don’t know who you are without them.
This is why it’s imperative to adjust your mindset. You know all the little idiosyncrasies you struggle with holding you back from experiencing life to the fullest. The problem is, that you continue to allow them to run rampant in your mind without taking control of them.
The sooner you can clamp down on these thoughts, the sooner you can move on. However, to do so, you have to work to understand who it is you want to be.
For many people, they’ve spent countless years creating their current identity. This identity may have been based on what they felt they needed to survive, and in some cases, they may have been right.
Just because you’re right though, it doesn’t mean it’s the same identity you need to move forward with. Those days could be long gone, but you may still carry that identity with you because you never learned how to shed it. In fact, it feels so much like you, how could you be any different?
When I was struggling with depression, I didn’t know what not being depressed felt like. Maybe little glimpses here and there, but I was never able to grasp the full meaning because depression was so overpowering.
As I began to come out of depression, it felt strange. It felt wrong. And yet, as bad as depression felt, at least I knew who I was. A miserable, unhappy, frustrated, insecure, worried individual who didn’t feel like he would amount to much in life, even though he really wanted to.
What’s really messed up, is as much as I hated living that way, I felt safe. I knew what to expect.
When I began to emerge I didn’t know what to expect anymore. I didn’t necessarily feel safe. It was as if I were trying on a new body and it didn’t quite fit. Over time though, it started to fit. The new way of thinking and feeling started to make sense.
There were many times when I would relapse and fall back into a depressive state of mind and wallow in my own self-pity for some time before reminding myself of who I was and where I was going.
But guess what? This was all happening through the power of my mind.
My mind, my mindset determined how I ultimately decided to think and feel.
Growing Your Mindset
It wasn’t whatever extenuating circumstances I might have been dealing with that caused me to tumble down the depression well. It was my weak mindset.
How do I know? Because when I started growing and developing my mindset, those little, minute, insignificant occurrences that would throw me off kilter, trip me up, and then smash my face into the mud no longer had power over me like they used to.
I stripped them of their power to affect me and began to take charge of my mind.
Now, there were some traumatic events I dealt with in the past that I did have to work through, but work through them I did.
Coupled with developing my mindset, I was able to overcome depression and anxiety.
I’m not the only person to do this either. There are many, many individuals out there who have overcome odds that should have overwhelmed them.
Take business for example. The only reason we have all the amazing products we have at our disposal today, clothes, homes, electricity, fresh water, air conditioning in the summer, heat in the winter, on and on the list goes, is because someone somewhere worked through all the struggles and issues to bring these things to fruition.
Do you think the creators of these businesses just seamlessly sauntered through the doors of opportunity to bring you your most prized possessions? No! They struggled their way through, and somehow, against all odds, they overcame all the different obstacles that stood in their way to create a business that you now purchase from.
But guess what?! Every single business owner went through turbulent times. They’ve faced failure after failure, setback after setback to make their dreams come true.
Anyone that you respect or admire, that has any semblance of success, in whatever area they’re successful, had to go through difficult circumstances to achieve their success.
Whatever endeavor you set out to accomplish, be prepared to experience adversity. Especially when learning how to change your mind.
The key is to stay persistent and to work on it every day. Every time you notice yourself slipping back into that old version of yourself, you catch it and stop it. You reorient yourself to the new ideal that you’re striving for.
Start doing difficult things that you wouldn’t normally do. Push yourself to be better every day. Don’t let up until you’ve reprogrammed your thoughts and feelings, because they won’t give up on trying to pull you back.
Stay in charge of your thinking and feeling. You have complete control over your thoughts and emotions, you just have to learn how to control them. And the way to do that is practice. Constantly reminding yourself of who you are and who you are becoming.
I’ll leave you with this thought:
“Your mind is a battlefield, be its commander, not its soldier”
– Unknown
Much love to you all
Josiah
