Our perspective on life is sometimes the result of a “psychological cage” we have built over time: the environment we live in, the people we surround ourselves with, our past experiences, social influence, the stereotypes of television and the media, and so on.
If we add to all that the cognitive biases we unconsciously fall victim to, what we see doesn’t always resemble reality. Sometimes it depends on how we look at it. The good news is that we can consciously work on freeing our minds from those mental processing errors and, sometimes, stop being such jerks.
These three short stories were taken from Think Better, Live Better, a personal development event that tried to teach people to find happiness simply by changing their perspective.
1. I work as a nurse in a hospital. I had been in a relationship with a man for a while, a pretty toxic relationship in which we never stopped arguing. One day, I had another argument with him over the phone during my shift. When it was over, I went down to do my rounds, completely shaken after crying my eyes out. That’s when one of my patients, who is terminally ill with leukaemia, asked me: “Hey, are you OK? What’s wrong?”
2. Ten years ago today, I planned to take my own life. It is also ten years to the day since I found out I was pregnant with my son, who is now nine. When I found out I was pregnant by the man who had left me, with no job, no family support and no money at all, I wanted to kill myself. Today I enjoy the greatest gift life could have given me: my son.
3. At university there’s a girl everyone keeps talking about, because at 25 she has twin daughters aged 10. People have been saying she must have got pregnant at 14 or 15 and that she’s a single mother, so she ruined her life by sleeping around when she was young. Today I learned the real story. It turns out her parents divorced, and her mother had the twins with her new partner. Four years ago, her mother and the twins’ father died in a car accident. At just 21, this girl became her half-sisters’ legal guardian and is raising them as if she were their mother.
Conclusion 1
When did we decide that staying in a toxic relationship with someone is more important and more worrying than dying of cancer? What would a terminal cancer patient do if they had the chance to be saved? Would they waste their time stuck in a toxic relationship or, on the contrary, would they try to enjoy life?
One thing is clear. You only live once, and you don’t know when you’re going to die. Don’t waste your time on unnecessary suffering. Every week I come across many people suffering in love over things I personally stopped suffering over a long time ago. And no, I haven’t become colder, as some people suggest. I think I’ve reached a certain degree of emotional intelligence: if someone gives me good moments and adds to my life, I want them by my side. If they take away from my life and, on the emotional scales, the bad moments outweigh the good ones, I don’t want to keep “that” by my side.
Hold on tight to the people who are worth it and kick to the kerb anyone who only brings you bad times. There are no excuses for not doing it, no excuses for not fighting for your own happiness, because one day you may regret not having done it and not having sent certain people packing.
Conclusion 2
At what point does someone discover that the news that made them consider suicide turned out, over time, to be the best thing that ever happened to them?
It’s true that sometimes many apparent misfortunes are blessings in disguise. And we’re not only talking about a pregnancy at the worst possible moment. In life, these blessings show up disguised as all kinds of misfortunes.
Take being fired, for example. Losing your job doesn’t feel good at all, but sometimes it’s a release that lets you give free rein to your projects and be more creative in life. If some people hadn’t been fired from their jobs, we would have missed out on great advances, because those people would never have started their own companies while caged in their jobs.
Happy marriages have come about because one day someone’s partner left them. A person can’t stop crying the day their partner leaves, without realising that, thanks to that, they will find the love of their life.
Artists have created incredible works of art thanks to personal tragedies, and great hit songs have been written out of the anger and sadness their authors once went through.
“Some endings are just the beginning of something better.”
Conclusion 3
Don’t waste your time judging anyone, especially if that person hasn’t done anything to you. A girl may have got pregnant at 15 because she was reckless. Other people commit crimes at that age, others play around with drugs, and so on.
What matters isn’t what you did yesterday, but who you are today, and the past doesn’t have to haunt anyone if that person is no longer who they were. We can all change our lives, and you can learn not to judge people.
As for the girl in the story, I’m sure many of the people who judged her would never have had the courage, or the guts, to take on the responsibility she took on when tragedy struck.
See also: 10 life lessons we learn too late
Featured image: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
