Every experience can be a positive or a negative one, it just matters how you react and what your perception of the situation is.
It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters
Epictetus
Rubin Carter, the subject of the Denzel Washington movie, “Hurricane”, was the top contender for the middleweight boxing title in the mid-1960s, until he was imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, triple murder. Carter walked into the prison wearing a nice suit and what we would these days call ‘bling’. He looked the warden in the eye and informed him,
I’m willing to stay here until I get out. But I will not, under any circumstances, be treated like a prisoner – because I am not and never will be powerless
He understood anger, despair or grovelling were not constructive.
He refused to wear a uniform, eat prison food, have visitors, attend parole hearings or work in the commissary to reduce his sentence. And no one touched him unless they wanted a fight.
Instead he worked on his legal case and boxing training. He studied law, philosophy and history. For nineteen years.
It took three retrials but Carter walked free. And simply resumed his quest to be Champion.
No suing for compensation, no request for an apology, no pursuing those who had wrongly accused him. Because that would imply that they had taken something from him. He had made the decision that, it might not be what he wanted, but it will not affect him.
Our perception is the thing that we’re in complete control. They can do what they want but they’ll never control our thoughts, beliefs and reactions. We are never truly powerless.
Lots of great leaders have recognised this, from Nelson Mandela to Malcolm X (another Denzel role) to Gandhi. They each turned prison into a masters degree in personal transformation which they used to transform nations.
Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so
– William Shakespeare
There is no good or bad, there is only perception, the stories we tell ourselves.
An employee makes a mistake that costs you money. You can beat yourself up, wail on them, punish them and/or lose sleep over it.
Or, you can see it as a learning opportunity. Most lessons, like avoiding making mistakes, have to be learned by experience. A mistake becomes training, as Ryan Holiday put it.
Someone messed up. But the evaluation and the outcome are different. With one approach you took advantage; with the other you succumbed to anger and fear. Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn’t mean you have to agree. Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn’t mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves. Or whether we will tell one at all.
– Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is The Way.
(Anger and fear are actually the same thing. As someone, I think it was Brené Brown, or maybe Krista Tippett, says, ‘anger is just fear in disguise’, or something like that.)
I like the above Holiday quote because it touches on this perception principle, but also alludes to Mindfulness practices; you are not your thoughts.
This concept is based on Stoic philosophy but is universal, something I think the below video shows…
Cheers,
Scott
Check out The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday at http://amzn.to/2sgmGP5
