The Right Mindset

I saw something the other day that really struck a chord with me on many levels. It was a meme, which is not surprising considering how much I look at those.

The notion behind the meme that was really important was instead of thinking to ourselves "Why is this happening to me?!?!" that we are so often accustomed to going into when a difficult situation presents itself, instead we should be approaching it "What is this teaching me?" and damn, that was powerful!

I would like to think that subconsciously, I have been taking this approach to my life for a long time, but at the end of the day I'm not really sure if I am or not.

Since seeing that though, I've really started to live this mindset as much as I can. It's certainly not always possible to do it immediately but if we take a step back for a few and try to do it, we can usually get ourselves out of a negative loop in our brains and get to thinking about something critically.

I think we are at a really crucial point at the time in humanity we are in right now. There are a lot of things being pushed onto people that make them feel like a helpless victim and that they need somebody or something to help them get through this. Most of the time it is a pharmaceutical drug but also lately it's therapists and doctors that are being pushed upon people as well. This is some insidious stuff because we are incredibly strong and powerful beings, otherwise we wouldn't have lived for 200,000+ years!!

By taking a step back and approaching a situation that happens such as a terrible day at work, an argument with a spouse or significant other and many other events. Instead of feeling helpless and asking ourselves why something is happening in a feeble way, we should be taking the approach of figuring out what the situation is supposed to teach us so we can grow, adapt and make modifications for the future.

I think I've had this mentality in the workplace first because that is where I spend the majority of my day. I have had a few situations over the past few years where we got into a real fucking pickle in terms of shit that hit the fan. There was all kinds of craziness going on, people getting upset, things broken and all that. I am not perfect by any means, BUT I think I was able to really take a step back after I was stressed the fuck out, and get my nose down to figure shit out and get out of the situations.

This wasn't easy, but looking back on it in the viewpoint of this particular meme that I found and saved, I really was able to live this in these situations. I certainly asked why a situation happened, so I could get to a root cause analysis type of knowledge but at the same time, I was also of the mindset "what is this teaching me?" and often times it was that my process was wrong, lacking or the documentation was missing for something.

This was a really important revelation and one that I've also been adapting more in my life outside of work. I am glad that I have a pleasant home life, with a loving family and not a lot of issues but when the issues do arise, I have been focusing more of my attention to get my head out of my ass and approach it from a teaching perspective. What went wrong, what do I need to do to prevent that from happening in the future if possible? Those types of things.

I think if more people approached the various facets of life in this manner, we would have a lot less societal issues potentially!