Whenever my boys used to come home from school, and complain about, a teacher having behaved in a very power-abusing way, or having experienced an unfairness, I always said to them:
“Remember the way you feel now, as a lesson, so that, you yourself, never become like that person, or behave like you saw someone behaving today.”
I agree that that was not always what they wanted to hear :-). Because most of the times when we feel indignant about something, we want people to agree with us, and lament with us, about ‘poor-us-having-to-have-lived-this-experience’. But I wanted them to stop, to take a step back, and to learn something from it.
That way, not only do you stop the negative emotions from down spiraling towards anger and aggressive language, but you also learn to look at situations from a distance, from a different angle.
Whenever you step back, breathe, and stop to think about the situation for a moment, the heat of the emotion quiets down enough, so that you are able to see other possibilities, so that you are able to quiet your ego, and to let compassion and understanding grow bigger.
It’s what dr. Wayne Dyer, one of my biggest inspirations, as I am sure you must have figured out by now :-), said:
“When you change, the way you look at things,
the things you look at, change”.
We hear, and read this sentence very often as it’s a well-known quote, and we could easily discard it as just another quote, but
think about it, practice it, and you’ll see that this is very true.
I so believe in becoming aware of different possible angles, in noticing what else is possible, in taking a step back before reacting.
So much damage is avoided by not lashing out, by not giving in to that knee jerk reaction, by letting the dust settle for a moment and think about what is really happening here.
The more people are able to simply observe, contemplate, think about what is happening, the more anger, judgment, and hatred can be avoided.
When we start living by the idea that all and everyone is our teacher, the more we will think about what is going on, and how we best react, or not react.
By observing good people, you learn how you can become a better person.
By observing ‘bad’ people, you learn what you do not want to be in life.
When seeing beautiful things happening around you, participate, and make this an even larger project.
When you do not agree with certain situations, see it as an invitation to change, to start doing things differently.
Just complaining, blaming, or shaming, does absolutely nothing to better the situation or the person.
On the contrary.
Because you then only participate in the negativity. Even though you may be condemning something ‘bad’, you are still on that low, judging vibe.
If you learn to see things, things you believe are absolutely not okay, as an invitation to observe your own behavior, your own actions, I am convinced that this will trigger you to become a better person.
Because you then look for improvement, you then look to do things in a compassionate, loving way, instead of reacting in the same negative, aggressive way as the person before you is doing.
That is why I believe that, no matter who you encounter, no matter what situations are going on in the world, there is always a lesson to be learned from it.
See it as an invitation to learn, to change, to become a better person yourself.
Don’t despair, but learn and grow.
The more you evolve, the more you will radiate this goodness,
and the more people you will ‘infect’ with goodness, compassion and love.
Thank you all for reading me, and for supporting me on Medium! If you want unlimited access to all of my articles and many other authors, you can become a Medium Member and you’ll be supporting me and all the other authors. Many, many thanks to you all!!!
Katrien