Optimism: Perspective & Gratitude
People often tell me that I’m incredibly positive and optimistic. I wasn’t always that way and the road to get here wasn’t easy. I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons, but now I wouldn’t go back and change anything. Often times we learn the most by making mistakes and going through difficult experiences. A wise friend(Ryan Nadeau) once said to me, “We have complete control over 2 things. Our breath, and our reactions.”
The weirdness that is my life started rather early, even before my conception. My mother is this amazingly strong, kind, non-materialistic hippie-lady, who graduated with a liberal arts degree and took off backpacking around the world for 11 years, living out of a backpack in 33 different countries. She was 37 and nearing the end of her reproductive-era and had to make a decision to have a child then or she would lose her window of opportunity. She was living in Thailand at the time, and had already accepted the fact that she was going to be a single-mother. She was in love with the country, and decided to go out and find the most attractive/healthy/intelligent/young Thai virgin — deflowered him, and I came out of that. She was 37, he was 21, but goodness did that situation work out for everyone’s benefit. She moved back in with her mom and dad in America, got on welfare, saved up enough welfare money to go back to school for her masters degree, and ended up starting her professional career as a teacher just before turning 40. I was raised without ever knowing my biological dad, until I went on a backpacking trip through Thailand last year and found him.
Gratitude — It’s important to recognize that there are many people in the world who have it worse than you. I wouldn’t wish suffering upon anyone, but when you’ve hit rock bottom and risen above it, it really puts everything else into perspective. We have so many blessings, and things to be grateful for, and yet we take so many things for granted, allowing ourselves to be negative and upset for seemingly trivial challenges(I am also guilty of this).
I try to take every negative experience/failure as a learning experience, to put my own life into perspective and to find something amongst the shit to be grateful for. We often have no control over the negative experiences that life throws at us, but we can control our reactions and our mental perspective. Each and every one of us are capable of having more mental strength/fortitude than we often give ourselves credit for. If we allow our minds to spiral down a negative path, we are mainly hurting ourselves by making a bad situation even worse. Now, it’s definitely not easy to pull yourself out of a negative spiral, but staying connected to the blessings in your life is a powerful technique that will help you get through those times.
Time is our most valuable asset. When we come into this world, we are given a finite amount of time on this planet to learn, develop relationships and experience the world. 24 hours in a day and 12 months in a year. So many people take life and health for granted. Living unconsciously, day-to-day, working jobs that make them miserable so they can spend their money on things they don’t need. But why? Life is such a beautiful gift, it is such a shame to be blind to all of our gifts and opportunity. Our realities are what we make it, especially with all of the privileges of living in a first world country with infinite opportunities.
When I visited Thailand and met my biological dad for the first time/the rest of my Thai family, it was like a slap in the face for all of the privileges that I take for granted. These people lived in dirt floor huts, with 8–10 people living in 1 house smaller than my San Francisco apartment(and no real toilets). I got to watch my 75-year-old grandmother take a nap on a hard wood platform in the sun, with no blankets/pillows etc. These people have no opportunity. They live off of $50/month. They can’t afford good medical care. They don’t have internet or computers. They’ve never heard of organic/free-range/gluten-free foods. The most fucked up part about all of it, is that we have no control over who we are born into the world as. These people have the same amounts of mental potential, but are born into a life with significantly less opportunity. We’re over here wasting life watching reality television about Snookie and the Kardashians, while other equally capable(and in many cases harder-working) people can only dream of the blessings we take for granted.
Something to keep in mind the next time you break your phone screen or your Uber/Lyft driver is an inconvenient 15 minutes away, 40% of the world lacks access to proper toilets.
Here is one example of a recent terrible experience and my response:
One day, my back just gave out and I was bedridden for a week with serious lower back pain exacerbated by stress. I couldn’t walk. My relationship to movement is the most important essence of my being. I am a hip-hop/hula hoop dancer and yogi, so removing my mobility is literally one of the worst things you can do to me. It was really uncomfortable. I was very unhappy and cried a lot out of frustration. My mind wanted to be up running around everywhere jumping off of things, but my body was limited to lying down stationary. I was walking after 1 week and have been able to go back to doing the things that I love, but I will never forget that time where for one week I did not have that luxury that I take for granted every day. The ability to walk, move, and the physical freedom that comes with it. We have fucking opposable thumbs and able bodies. All of these are gifts not to be taken for granted. Every single day that we are able to get up and walk is a luxury that some people will never get a chance to experience ever in their lives. When your life seems to be raining shit, don’t forget how blessed you are.
Perspective is really important. If we are already subject to an uncomfortable situation, we have the power to make it either significantly better or worse on ourselves. Over the years, through many trials and tribulations, I have trained my mind to immediately react with, “What can I learn from this experience?” and “What do I have to be grateful for?” When opening up our perspectives into seeing the bigger picture, our first world problems seem pretty insignificant. All of our “failures” are only real failures if we never learn from them. We have a lot more mental strength than often times is immediately apparent, and we do have the power to control our own perspectives to learn from challenges life throws our way.
@isisAnchalee | isis[at]ilooklikeanengineer.com
