I’m currently in the midst of helping a person to get a personal project of his going as his main reason for not being able to do so is that a past experience is holding him back from having confidence in doing it and that it is probably going to happen again. Many times when something happens in our lives that affect us negatively in a big way most people tend to take the easy road and lean towards lingering on to the event by focusing on how bad their situation is. They then grudgingly live by that and it’s almost as if they want to remain that way to prove some kind of point such as they have no control of anything and that it is pointless to try. Why do people do that?
In my opinion and even from my personal experiences, even negative experiences often have some kind of important wisdom that you should take from it to help you in whatever it is that you are trying to accomplish. In that sense, a bad experience is really something good in disguise and it’s up to you to reveal that. A very typical example that I hear a lot in business is that a person starting out gets completely frustrated as it seems like every vendor/supplier he works with ends up not providing him with what he wanted and so there is no point in trying anymore.
That is the easy thing to do by simply looking at the event from a negative perspective as if it didn’t help you at all. It also creates a false belief that it’s always the other person’s fault. But really, even with that example you can find something good out of it. For example, that could be a lesson for you to thoroughly write down what you are looking for in the future and to create a contract agreement to prevent any surprises on what was said before. If you think about it, it’s a great thing that you learned to do that now as oppose later when you have to do something bigger which could potentially cause you to lose a lot more.
Another example that was said to me before to try and debunk this way of thinking was with a made up scenario on how I should pretend that the industry one was in has been consistently going downhill as virtually everyone has been forced to close down or downsize in a big way. How can one see a positive in that you say? While it is an unfortunate event, is it really that difficult to see the positives that can come out of it? For example, if everyone was forced to close down their business but there would obviously still be some demand for whatever it is that you offered, this can be a good thing as that means everyone including your bigger competitors before now have to start from scratch as well to adapt to the new circumstances which places you in a great position in capturing more of the market share. Is that really a bad thing in the long run for you?
I personally strongly believe that everything happens for a good reason as it is in some way helping you to achieve what you are trying to do in life. That doesn’t mean that you should take this in some kind of goofy direct way either such as if you fell down and scraped your hands you then say something like “I was told things happen for a reason and so it’s good that I am injured nowâ€. The bottom line is if you transform your way of thinking in trying to take the positives in a situation that looks bad it can often lead to better things.
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