There are sunny days and rainy days. And there are periods when fires burn for days forcing masses of people to evacuate and leaving everyone inhaling smoky, unhealthy air. Some people make the case that bad and good days might just be in our own head. I don’t buy into the notion at all. Neither to the idea that everything happens for a reason. Sometimes terrible things happen. To good people. For no reason at all. That is a fundamental human phenomenon: we experience the good and the bad, happiness and heartache, health and illness, pleasure and pain, and success and failure. Everyone has good and bad days. It’s completely unavoidable.
On good days, things flow. The universe seems to be smiling back at us. There’s this feeling of being in the right place at the right time and on track. But there are days when nothing seems to go right, no matter how hard we try. On these days, it feels like the world is against us, and that like Sisyphus, we are rolling a boulder up a hill fighting to have an edge and get ahead. While we have little control over what happens to us, and we may not understand why certain things happen, we can always choose our response to any given situation. Mind over matter is how I choose to live each day and manage the curveballs. I believe mindset is a matter of choice, and every choice we make makes us. We are in charge of our attitude and emotions. It’s entirely our choice how to view, interpret and respond to the world, and people, around us.
One of the hardest situations to deal with in our personal and professional life is conflict. It could ruin a day right off the bat. One reaction is to try and defend ourselves, and when emotions run high unwittingly paint ourselves into corners. A universal truth is that we cannot change other people. Thus, a disagreement is really an opportunity to investigate and define your boundaries. Self-reflection is one of the keys to personal power. When we begin with contemplation, we can better navigate our emotions to rethink the problem and to identify the most efficient ways to handle the situation.
The first step is to recognize negativity – your own and others’. We are all surrounded by negativity and naysayers. Negativity is a destructive force depleting your mental energy and creative capacity; much like the wildfires deplete a lot of natural resources. It might be hard to discern the more subtle forms negativity can take. Whether malevolent or well-intended, it can undermine self-confidence and derail goal-directed actions. By learning to understand and get comfortable with negativity, we can develop a powerful naysayer shield. With the protection of that shield, we can make deliberate choices: go to battle, or bow out. Not every battle is worth having. Sometimes the winning strategy is to disengage, not play the game and leave the playground.
Disengage to take control of your emotions. Rules of disengagement: take five, take a think, take action.
Take Five: pause to identify the context and source of the negative experience.
Take a Think: use logic and reasoning to reframe the negative emotions into positive affirmations.
Take Action: remove yourself from any unnecessary confrontations. Reserve your mental energy for what really matters and let go of what isn’t worth your attention.
Remember that the only constant in life is change: time passes, feelings change, and hurts heal. Negative situations and emotions can be turned into positive ones. There could be an opportunity down the line to revisit the issue in a different way to achieve the desired outcome.
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