Don't throw a good (or bad) day away
Perspective is a powerful tool. Take advantage of it on those challenging days.
A life-changing experience
We can all claim at least one. From the thrill-seeking adventurous to the lying-low book lover, anyone can reflect on a moment where something triggered a sequence of events that changed their path. They dealt with it, adapted, and made it here to tell the story. Would their stories be as inspiring without those challenging moments?
I have the extreme privilege of living in modern-day 21st century Houston, TX. If we put it in the perspective of humans’ journey through time, we can’t even describe the number of riches most of the world has today.
Yet, here we are, still reeling from the impact of a widespread electrical grid failure a few weeks ago that set a chain of significant issues across the entire state, leading to suffering, worry, and uncertainty in many families as they dealt with the unexpected challenge. (if you can, please help the relief efforts of many organizations through this link here)
Texans are a tough crowd! They have dealt with massive catastrophic events throughout their history, and have always shown an awe-inspiring collective effort towards quick recovery and healing. However, when we look at the instant reactions, there’s a strong bias towards maximizing the negative aspects of an already adverse situation.
Why do we seem wired to jump into the present’s perceived effects without pausing for quick calibration of the reaction?
For most of the population, this was just a short glimpse into how life would have been if, by chance, or by a ride in a DeLorean, you happened to be here a couple of centuries ago. A little nuisance, of course. Sure, some discomfort. At that pivot point, when a non-reversible event outside of your control happened, what was your choice of reaction?
We hardly create enough disruption in our routines to force adaptation and growth. If the world is giving you that chance, take it, and make the best of it. Apart from real-life threatening emergencies, it’s a much better option than discarding your days as forgettable stress-filled episodes.
Remember that time is life’s currency. Not many people are roaming around throwing their money away.
Tune down your stress radar
French parenting books can be very controversial for their supposedly harsh and seemly unattached style. Still, there’s a well-known technique across them that’s perfect from newborn to (stubborn) adults — it’s called “Le Pause” — take at least one good deep breath and observe what’s going on before jumping into action.
This simple act has saved many parents of sleepless nights, and it works on a straightforward principle. It allows the babies to go through and learn how to deal with their natural sleep cycles.
By tuning down your fight or flight instinct to whatever the environment presents you and utilizing all this insane brainpower available to humans, we can choose to make the right choice. We’ve evolved a long way from the life in Savannah, where a predator lurking around at any time wouldn’t let us have a quick pause to think.
Embrace the experiment
Restoring the state of equilibrium is a default reaction to every life force in nature. It’s well studied and called homeostasis and explains why you can’t get below that bodyweight threshold, your body temperature remains constant, and ecosystems can recover from disastrous weather events.
It’s a natural reaction to oppose change, creating an opposing action to neutralize it. But if we wipe out all blips in the radar, there’s no opportunity to overcome obstacles and grow through them.
There’s a famous quote from Dr. Deming:
“Survival is optional. No one has to change”.
It frequently appears in business circles to highlight the importance of embracing change to keep enterprises relevant.Resilience and adaptability to challenging circumstances permeate all levels, from the individuals’ survival to the civilizations that thrived through time.
A fulfilling life journey requires change, a massive one even to get started. We were all one of the biggest, scariest, and most joyful experiments of our parents’ lives. Embrace the adverse events that will get thrown out to you along the ride, treat them as experiments to shake out the routine, and move happily to the next one.
