Got something suboptimal in your life?
Limitations
A few years ago I read a great blog post on HELLO, My Name is Blog and it really resonated. I recently went back to it and decided to share a part of it.
Here’s a quote taken from there that referred to a cancer patient speaking to their doctor.
If you have a bad attitude about your disease, odds are, you won’t get better, because you won’t do the necessary research on the resources that will make you better. You’ll never find the solution that leads to the solution. That’s the physical and procedural manifestation of a bad attitude. Mindset may not affect the outcome, but it does affect the experience.
I recommend a read for sure.
Another great quote I heard from Krista Tippett, a badass who won the Peabody Award, is a New York Times best-seller and who received the National Humanities Medal at the White House for “thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence.”
Life is a series of challenges and your happiness is determined by how you deal with the challenges
I think about this concept a lot. Every time I run into something that I’m bad at my first reaction is “wow I suck, there’s no hope, might as well quit and do what I’m good at” and then my immediate second reaction is a fat (theoretical) slap across the face. If you say you suck, then you’re always going to suck. I don’t believe in fate and anything being predetermined for us. Obviously there are some things out of our control but for the most part, the results of our lives are forged by our actions and our responses to the actions of those around us.
Mantra
Two years ago I set a calendar reminder to repeat every Friday at 11am. It says:
I feel the way I feel because I choose to feel that way.
Everytime I get the notification I spend a minute repeating it to myself and really truly internalizing it. I deeply think about the implications of that statement. It’s helped me a lot in life. Because when you’re sad, some sick and twisted part of you wants to stay sad. Your sadness feeds on itself and the only way to break out is to realize that you’re feeding it. It’s almost fun to throw a little pity party for yourself. It makes you feel bad but at the same time it just feels so ‘right’ because it’s so easy. For whatever reason our minds just naturally want to stay at this pity party, moping around, thinking the world owes us something. It takes energy to leave that state. But when you realize you’re the one keeping yourself in that state, it becomes a lot easier to leave.
This is something that I constantly need to remind myself about, so that’s why I set the calendar reminder that’s been going strong for two years.