The detail that will greatly impact your outcome
What makes a difference why sometimes people overcome pain and obstacles and sometimes don’t? This question has been on my mind for quite a long time.
As I was going through my challenges the first several years since the accident, I never really analyzed what made me do what I did and what helped handle the pain and overcome obstacles that made my vision look nearly impossible. I just knew I would never give up on my vision and would not allow anybody to talk me out of it. I consistently moved forward in life breaking through the obstacles that I met on my way. I had my sight on my vision, was holding on to my faith and would not let anything to stop me. Only after I implemented some of my biggest goals, I started thinking about what helped me to go through my toughest times and reach that, which seemed impossible. Especially it made me think about it once I started hearing people say “I’m not as strong as you are”. Listening to them, I would ask myself “Why do they think they are not strong enough to handle their situation or that I am stronger than they are?
The truth is that it is not that I am stronger or better. It is what I decided to do after I had the crash. Observing people’s comments, I see that it seems to many that I handled everything easily because I am “naturally strong”. Well, No it was never easy. Never. At times the emotional pain was just unbearable. I do get those hits on the ongoing basis.:) and No it is not easy. Sometimes it seems that the further I go in life, the stronger hits I get. But I keep going. I am committed to my outcome and I do not allow myself to give up on it when it gets tough. Often I say that problems either break you or make you stronger, and it depends on you what result you are going to have. I learned something very powerful that I use to handle whatever I have to face. There are several things that are important. It is like only by putting numerous various ingredients you can make a cake.:) But today I am talking about the detail that greatly influences how we feel and how we handle unfavorable situations.
I shared in my previous post that faith is my strong foundation and it is the main source of strength to handle it all. Faith set the mindset that empowered me at all times. It gave me the hope and strength to move on no matter how desperate my situation seemed to be.
There is another critical part – the power of how you communicate with yourself about what happens and what you are going to do about it. Observing myself and other people, I started seeing that how things turn after an unfavorable event happens, most of the times depends on how we look at it. Why? That’s where our journey starts either toward winning or losing the game. The reason being why it is so crucial is because depending on how we interpret the event and communicate to ourselves our ability to handle it, we will feel either low self-esteem or even helpless Or strong and empowered, and That will determine what we are going to do next. Would you agree that we choose different action when we feel helpless and doubtful, and when we feel determined and empowered?
Having the same event, you have two choices of how you look at it and what you say to yourself. Is this a punishment or is this a lesson for you? Is this a loss or an opened opportunity to have new and better? Does this situation show you are not capable or does this situation show there is an area where you can improve yourself, so you can do better next time? Is this a dead end or a challenge for you to find a way because you know there must be a way? Is this too much for you to handle or not? Your first choice to say to yourself is “I am not strong enough to take it. This is too much for me”. The second choice – say to yourself “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, and so that means I am strong enough to take it. And I am strong enough not just to cope with it, but I will take it with courage and with God’s help I will win the game”. Would you agree that communicating things that empower and dis-empower you, will deliver totally different result in your life?
So it is important to be careful with how you communicate to yourself about what happens, and what you say to yourself whether you can or cannot get the outcome you want.
Which mindset are you going to choose? It depends what outcome you want to have in your life. You are the one, who decides how you look at things and what you think about. We cannot control events that happen in our lives, but we can control how we look at it and then what we do about it.
So, be strong and choose the perspective that will empower you. You will see a big difference!
