One Person's Heaven is Another Person's Hell - Often, We Create Our Own
Some seem determined to find fault in almost everyone and everything around them. They blame everyone but themselves for their failure to accomplish personal and professional goals, their inability to get along with others, and their unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life in general. Such people are fond of saying that life is hell! They seem to take great pleasure in being miserable.
When contact with such people is inevitable and unavoidable, I resign myself to their presence and patiently put up with their diatribe about all that is wrong and unfair in the world, how past experiences are to blame for their present troubles, and how no one understands them. Eventually, my silence, body language, and facial expression reveal that I neither concur nor care; so they move on to seek out a more sympathetic audience.
Everyone experiences happiness and sadness, satisfaction and disappointment, success and failure, pain and pleasure. Some choose to dwell upon the negative, while others prefer to focus upon the positive. I personally choose the latter. Greater minds than mine have expressed this philosophy much more succinctly and better than I have attempted to do in this blog post.
"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..." (John Milton, Paradise Lost)
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It Is the courage to continue that counts." (Winston Churchill)
"The past may dictate who we are, but we get to determine what we become." (Steven Spielberg)
"Nothing is neither good nor bad. Thinking makes it so." (William Shakespeare, Hamlet)
When contact with such people is inevitable and unavoidable, I resign myself to their presence and patiently put up with their diatribe about all that is wrong and unfair in the world, how past experiences are to blame for their present troubles, and how no one understands them. Eventually, my silence, body language, and facial expression reveal that I neither concur nor care; so they move on to seek out a more sympathetic audience.
Everyone experiences happiness and sadness, satisfaction and disappointment, success and failure, pain and pleasure. Some choose to dwell upon the negative, while others prefer to focus upon the positive. I personally choose the latter. Greater minds than mine have expressed this philosophy much more succinctly and better than I have attempted to do in this blog post.
"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..." (John Milton, Paradise Lost)
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It Is the courage to continue that counts." (Winston Churchill)
"The past may dictate who we are, but we get to determine what we become." (Steven Spielberg)
"Nothing is neither good nor bad. Thinking makes it so." (William Shakespeare, Hamlet)
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Alicia wrote: "The mind can only hold one thought at a time (with a sea of others clamoring to take its place).There are some mornings that I wake up, and see the world as entirely black. After all, I've been d..."
Alicia,
How ironic that adult children may end up utilizing behavior modification techniques with the parents who applied it while raising them.
Thank you for viewing the blog post and for sharing the astute observations.
Jim Vuksic
If someone is worth it to you - either because you love them or because you have to deal with them - the time is well spent.With other people, just walk away.
There are some mornings that I wake up, and see the world as entirely black. After all, I've been disabled for 26 years, have a very slow brain, etc., etc., etc.
As soon as I realize what is going on (takes a while some days - you'd think I would have learned by now), I start to fight back. Why? Because I'M the one most affected by that blackness.
It is DEPRESSION, and depression ALWAYS LIES.
Gratitude helps. Especially being grateful that I can write it out, poke holes in the blackness, choose a better thought to hold in my precious mental space, tiny as it is.
I agree with you: being around those who cannot or will not monitor and control their own moods is hard on ME - because I can control my own thoughts (to enough of an extent to get the process started), but I cannot control other people.
Getting out of their presence as quickly as possible is an imperative, a physical feeling.
Karen Pryor, in her amazing book Don't Shoot the Dog, talks about dreading her conversations with her mother, who was in a nursing home and had many problems, because her mother was an extremely needy, negative person. She worked out how to change their conversations: anything negative from mom was met with "um." No reaction either way.
Anything even remotely NOT negative she met with bits of positive feedback, chatting, funny stories. She says it took a while, but in the later years she was able to talk to her mom, give space to her mom's needs, but that most of their conversations were then things to keep and enjoy.
I've remembered that: you can alter other people's behavior if you modify your own. It's a lot of work, only worth it for some people you love. And you have to acknowledge everything is not rainbows and unicorns for the other person. But then not let the negative dominate.
From your history, I bet you already do this.