...and that is a good thing!
Today, I want to discuss something that many people get wrapped up in. Even otherwise ‘whole’ people.
People try to control everything that happens to them. So many things can happen in our lives that are beyond our control. You or I could get into a car accident. Someone could cut you off in traffic. I could slip on a banana peel and fall. I could see something lewd and gawk at it.
Some of those are risks we implicitly accept every day. We understand what could happen and do as we wish despite it.
Yet, when people treat us rudely, or in a way that is less than showing us respect, we tend to get angry and indignant.
Remember that there are always at least two people in an interaction, and the other person brings a whole host of unpredictable possibilities to an interaction. You have your thoughts and feelings, and the other person’s thoughts and feelings.
I’ve had someone treat me very kindly, and another person treat me like dogshit within 2 minutes after that. I was at a bank once and my old gym teacher from elementary school said ‘Hi’ to me and was ecstatic to see me, and I was called over to the teller lady who was a gigantic bitch to me. The time span between saying bye to the teacher and encountering the teller place within the span of about 15-20 seconds, if memory serves.
It's not all about you - in fact, it never was.
In the past, I was always looking for a deeper, mystical meaning to things like this. If I couldn’t find one, I’d make up something that was negative and made me feel like a lesser human being. And of course, we tend to focus on the negatives and let that impact our day far more than the positives. I only remember the gym teacher greeting me because it was followed by utter rudeness by someone else.
I figured that this event ‘meant’ something deeply personal. I cooked up this steaming pile of bullcrap that it meant that God didn’t want to me to have friendly discussions, and that He wanted me to know that this world is a horrible place. I had a very negative outlook in the past.
The truth is that it’s not a horrible place – It’s beautifully chaotic. There are many things you simply cannot control. I wasted a lot of energy in the past being upset over things people did to me at random. This is different than intentional outright betrayal of people you knew and were possibly friends. That’s something you have every right to be upset over. I’m talking about total strangers while you’re out and about.
There are things you can control, and things that you cannot control regarding how others view you.
What you can control, and what you cannot control
What you can control are as follows – your body language, how confident and upbeat you are, how you think, how you carry yourself, etc. Your mindset and behaviors flow from that. You are more likely to get positive responses from people if you’re authentically happy. This isn’t 100% guaranteed of course, but it is more likely to happen.
What you cannot control are – how other people treat you, respond to you, and what happens independent of your mindset. Generally, you are more likely to get treated positively when you are positive, and more likely to be treated poorly if your negative or weak in how you present yourself.
I can tell you that you can be the most upbeat guy around and someone will treat you poorly. Again, this is beyond your control. To an extent, you can influence your attractiveness and how people treat you by the factors you can control. Beyond that, it’s really a roll of the dice. You can stack the odds in favor of people treating you well, but only to a point. Beyond that, it’s up to the other factors that make up our chaotic world.
That’s why it feels like the world will test you, and you may wonder why you should be in a positive mindset while others aren’t. That’s just general chaos of the world in play; it’s not personal. But it is a test to see how firm that frame of mind is.
Dating is just an extension of this principle. You can make yourself as attractive as possible given your present circumstance, but not everyone will want to date or be open to something more.
We have more control over the meaning and context of our stories than we think we do.
Personally, I take great comfort in the chaos of this world. It tells me it’s rarely personal, even when appearances would indicate that it is. We are all struggling with our perceived realities. The judgments of others are based around these versions of reality. Someone got laid off from his professional job because of COVID-19. Clients supposedly weren’t paying their invoices, and he had to be let go. He didn’t take it personally, even though it did suck to hear the news. It wasn’t about him. It was based on their perceived reality.
Life isn’t about what happens, but in our meaning behind the events. The stories we tell and what we cook up in our heads influences us far more than outside circumstances ever could. We must guard against what we tell ourselves considering negative events that happen.
People may treat you in ways that are less than respectful, and beyond maximizing the positive of what you can control, it’s just the chaos of the world. If it wasn’t you on the receiving end, it’d be someone else. Keep improving you. The world isn’t “sending you a message.” There isn’t sense to be made in these sorts of situations a lot of the time.
Special Announcement
I’ve lowered the price of the Kindle edition of “Become Whole” from $4.99 to $3.99 on Amazon. I know these are rough times for everyone, and I want to make my material as accessible as possible during these hard times.
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