What you believe has a strong impact on how you perceive bad events. If you build your life around your job, losing it can hurt you a lot more than if you believe you can switch jobs and still be happy. Changing those beliefs can help make the inevitable bad events easier to deal with.
Photo by Carl Black.
As advice site Barking Up the Wrong Tree explains, many of the bad events in our life are only as bad as we think they are. For example, a child might break down and cry over something as simple as a broken toy, but to them that toy is important. Likewise, even adults might feel like their life is over if someone breaks up with them. However, a slight perspective change can make a world of difference:
You get dumped by someone you’re totally in love with. Feel sad? God, yes. The world is going to end.
OK, same scenario, but afterwards you find out that person was actually a psychopath who killed their last three partners. Feel sad you got dumped? No, you’re thrilled.
So clearly “getting dumped” isn’t the important factor here. What changed? Nothing but your beliefs.
Obviously you can’t change your entire worldview every time you drop an ice cream cone (and some events will always be devastating), but some small tweaks to your belief system can help you manage the bad events better. For example, accepting that you’ll be OK if someone breaks up with you, or understanding that failure is necessary and not something you have to fear. Sometimes life sucks, but how you think about the bad times matters just as much as what you do about it.
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