Truth does not cease to exist from being ignored
In 1914, the great inventor Thomas Edison suffered a crushing blow. His entire laboratory burned down, the results of several years of his work were gone. Newspapers described the situation as "the worst thing that happened in Edison's life."
But that was a lie!
Edison did not look at what happened at all like everyone else. Instead, the inventor decided that this circumstance provided him with a brilliant opportunity to restore and revise much of his current work. It was said that in fact Edison soon after the fire said: “Thank God, all our mistakes were burnt out. Now we can start from scratch. And that was exactly what he did with his team.
Think about how this relates to your life. How many times have you heard that this is the end, when in fact it was the beginning? How many times have you put an end to your hidden hopes?
Today, I challenge you to become like those of our students whom we have helped over the past decade and to challenge the lies that have fueled you over the years. And we'll start with the five most common deceptions.
1. You must immediately make the right choice and never give it up
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The idea that you need to make the right choice from the very beginning is literally imprinted in the education system of our society. We send our children to university when they turn 17 or 18, but we also tell them to choose the path that they will be happy in the next 40 years. I remember thinking to myself: "What if my choice turns out to be wrong?" And that is exactly what happened, and more than once.
Having experienced both setbacks and difficulties over the years, through personal experience, I learned the truth: you can change your life path at any time you want it. Yes, you can always start from the beginning, and that is often wonderful. Of course, this is never easy, but no one devotes their whole life to the career that he naively chose as a teenager. And no one holds on to something that doesn't suit him.
The truth is that you cannot win at chess by only making moves forward; sometimes, to put yourself in a better position, you have to back down. And that's a great metaphor for life. And there are three little words that can free you from your past mistakes and regrets. These are the words: "Do it now …"
So … what should you do now?
Something. Something small. Until you stop still sitting in your chair, you will be attached to a destiny that you do not consider yours. If you get confused somewhere, start over. Try something else. Stand up and do something!
Try focusing a little less on the future and focus a little more on what you can do now that will benefit you anyway. Read on. Write. Learn and practice useful skills. Test your skills and ideas. Be adventurous and live in real life. Develop healthy relationships. These efforts will help you in any case, no matter what opportunities the future presents you.
Bottom line: When life does not go as planned, breathe calmly and remember that life is rich in its unpredictability. Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that circumstances will never be the same as before, and that the end of one thing is always the beginning of another.
2. Discomfort is undesirable
Discomfort is a form of pain, but it is not deep pain, it is a slight discomfort. This is the feeling you get when you step outside your comfort zone. Many people, for example, have the idea that exercise is a discomfort, so they don't do it. Eating spinach and lettuce also brings discomfort.
In fact, we need to understand that most forms of discomfort actually help us become stronger and smarter. However, many of us were raised by very loving parents who tried to make our childhood as comfortable as possible. As a result, we have grown up with the subconscious feeling that we don't need discomfort in our lives and that we constantly avoid it.
We end up stuck in a grueling cycle. Let's take diet and exercise as an example …
- First of all, because healthy food and exercise bring us discomfort, we lose our health. Instead of exercise, we opt for “comfortable” food and mindless TV shows.
- But bad health also causes discomfort, so we tend to distract ourselves from thoughts of our unhealthy bodies. To this end, we eat more unhealthy food and engage ourselves even more with unhealthy entertainment, we go shopping to buy things that we really don't want and don't need. And our discomfort only grows.
In truth, there is not a single person in the world who can resignedly endure all the blows that life presents. We are not doing that. We get upset, sad, stumble and sometimes fall. Because this is part of life, and this is also a discomfort. We get to know it and, over time, learn to adapt to it. This is what ultimately shapes our personality.
3. Grief is a burden that devastates us over time
You may have heard that long-term grief damages health. I say this because I was taught this way back when I was a teenager. A close friend of mine died in a car accident. At first, everyone sympathized with my tears, but weeks and months passed, and more and more often I told myself that it was time to forget. I remember someone told me: "Tears will not help in this matter." But this is not true. I needed to cry. Tears slowly watered the seeds of my recovery. And I recovered and became much stronger, kinder and wiser than I have ever been before.
Ten years later, life taught me this lesson twice more: the first time, when Angel and I survived the death of her older brother, Todd, who committed suicide, and the second time, when our mutual best friend Josh died of asthma just a month later.
Through the grief of losing loved ones, I received the gift of awareness … the realization that each of us will lose someone we love, and that this reality is a necessity.
As human beings, we often face grief, which helps us to remain human. For example, Angel once told me: "My brother will die more than once during the rest of my life, but everything is fine - it brings me closer to him." In this way, Angel reminded me that grief does not go unnoticed. Step by step, sigh after sigh, it becomes a part of us. And it becomes our healthy part.
It's like a broken ankle that always hurts when you dance, but you still dance, albeit with a slight limp.
4. Everything that we experience in life personally is reality
At a young age, we often doubt the stories and rumors we hear from other people, but we are always confident in what we personally see, hear or touch. In other words, if we see it with our own eyes, hear it with our ears, or touch it with our own hands, then this is absolutely true. But while this assumption may seem logical, it is not always the case.
All people have their own internal dialogues, have their own thoughts, and this has a great impact on how we interpret real events in life. We subconsciously look at things in accordance with our inner feelings, which means that what we see, hear or feel is not always the same as it is in reality. This is one of the main reasons why several different people can see the same event in completely different ways. Each of us imposes on the general view his own unique story - his own internal dialogue - and this changes our feelings, so each of us has a slightly different idea of what just happened. And sometimes that little difference makes all the difference in the world.
Perspective is everything!
In a sense, the stories we tell themselves narrow our perspective. When we talk about an event, we are talking about what we saw personally. This phenomenon reminds me of an old parable in which a group of blind men decided to touch an elephant to find out what it was. Each of them touched a different part - a leg, a torso, a trunk or a tusk. When they later began to describe the elephant, their stories were completely different.
Something similar happens to us. Someone thinks that his heart is completely broken. Some of us have lost our parents, brothers, sisters or children to accidents or illness. Someone was dealing with infidelity. Someone got fired from their job. Some of us have been discriminated against because of our gender or race. And when we are faced with some new event that awakens painful memories in us, we interpret it in accordance with our past negative experiences, and this narrows our view.
Let this be the call for you! The next time you feel an emotional struggle, ask yourself:
- How would I tell about this event?
- Can I be absolutely sure that my story is true?
- How do I feel when I talk about what happened?
- Is there any other way to tell about what happened?
Give yourself the opportunity to look wider, think more carefully. And don't keep in mind beforehand what was right and what was wrong.
5. It is very difficult to part with bad habits
For most of us (for example, those who are struggling with clinical depression), changing our habits is a simple process. People who say they are not are usually just looking for excuses. They always want a task to be 100% easier, no matter how easy it is now. It is always easier to do nothing than to do something. It's always easier to complain rather than act. It can be frustrating at times, but it's worth doing. It's worth reminding yourself that changing your habits is only a matter of desire. Just remember your actions and replace one small action with another.
Why are you doing what you are doing?
The collective answer to this question is simple:
Like most people, you don't know how to deal with stress and boredom in a healthy and effective way.
Yes, most of your bad habits are formed as a way to deal with stress and boredom - you move away from reality instead of accepting it. And these habits were not formed in an instant, which means that they will not go away immediately. You have acquired them through repetition, and the only way to change them is through repetition as well - make small, simple, gradual shifts.
First, let's look at five extremely common bad habits:
- A pointless waste of time
- Unhealthy food
- Watching TV or playing video games for hours a day
- Constant shopping trips for things you don't need
- General passivity and lack of exercise
Here are some new habits you can use to gradually replace them:
- Take control of the situation, start with the first, small steps that will not require you to strain
- Start eating healthy foods that you really enjoy
- Spend more time playing with family members or friends
- When you are bored - dance, play an instrument, read, write or do something that gives you pleasure
- Walking, jogging, hiking, biking or swimming
Then, once your brain gets used to the idea that you are ready for a change in your life, just follow these simple steps:
1. Pick one new habit and start sticking to it little by little - just five minutes a day.
2. Initiate your social responsibility through Facebook, Instagram and so on. Share the small changes you are making, and then ask someone to check you regularly (preferably daily) to make sure you are on track.
3. Identify key moments for yourself - for example, the moment you walk into the house after work - and then practice your new habit each time that moment comes.
4. Appreciate your new habit, keep track of those little pieces of progress that appear - for example, just tick the calendar every time you complete your activities; build a visual chain and make sure it doesn't break.
5. After you stop feeling discomfort from your five minutes a day, increase the time: first to seven minutes a day, then to ten minutes, and so on.
This is really all that is required of you - at least on a basic level. So try not to waste your time and energy resisting the changes in your life. Instead, put your time and energy into starting a new habit, one action a day, one small step at a time.
Let's go back to where we started this article …
… let's ask these questions again:
How many times have you heard that this is the end, when in fact it was the beginning?
How many times have you put an end to your hidden hopes?
How many times in your younger years have you heard from people a lie that Edison would call a bluff in his troubled days?
Think for a moment.
Remind yourself that truth never ceases to be ignored.
When the truth is ignored, consciously or subconsciously, it only complicates your life! And there is absolutely no reason to do so. There is no reason to burden yourself with old lies and half-truths.
Face it, speak the truth, and live the truth - it's incredibly important, always!
Your turn…
Marc Chernoff
