Everything ends.
But nothing really does, does it?
Things might end on a material level. A relationship, a job, a moment. But there are threads that keep us attached to things that have ended, and that make them come back. Memories, feelings, thoughts.
It’s the accumulation of everything that happens that makes us who we are. Nothing really ends.
Your choice is whether you want to keep all that in a messy closet or if you want to give it a shape that you can call your story.
The effort we put into avoiding difficult conversations.
The energy we invest into keeping that bad feeling at bay.
The thoughts we dedicate to finding ways to reduce uncertainty.
That’s what makes everything more difficult, bad, and uncertain.
When you accept that as a part of being a colleague, a leader, a partner, a friend, a parent, a human being, then the rest of the journey is downhill.
I’m not suggesting that we should cease efforts to alleviate pain, our own or that of others. But as psychotherapist Sheldon Kopp was keenly aware, our “mistaken belief that it can be cured” is what makes pain unbearable.
Ed Batista, Pain Is Mandatory. Suffering Is Optional.
When we lose, it’s easy to play down the whole situation.
It was not so important after all.
Others were lucky.
That single decision was unfair and really cut my chances.
I did not give my best, but if I would have..
The context was heavily against me.
It’s a defence mechanism that puts space between us and the failure so that we don’t feel like such. And it tells of a tendency to see loss as failure.
Of course, if we want to avoid losing more in the future, we’d be better off by owning the loss and trying to see what went wrong. What it is that is under our control and that we can do better.
That’s the sign of a winning mentality.
You have challenges, difficulties, competitors, people who are definitely not on your side, the world out there that’s trying to make it even more complicated, personal problems, injuries, thoughts, feelings, uncertainties. And that can take you to dark places sometimes.
We all go through the same stuff. The best way to navigate all that is to spot this common ground and build a shared view. When you make of sportsmanship your credo, you’ll find that life is suddenly easier.
What you are today is nothing compared to what you will be tomorrow.
And what you are today is massively more compared to what you were yesterday.
Life is continuous progress. Many look for success in what lies ahead – I will have more – while at the same time regretting the lack of what once was – I was better off. The point is to completely revert the perspective, and start measuring success looking at the path so far while aspiring to what comes next.
It’s always the journey, not the destination.
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
Epicurus
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