. . . PERSPECTIVE.
It’s a fact; bad things happen to good people. Regardless of how well we attempt to manage our lives, no one escapes unscathed when it comes to the negative side of life.
The truth is that we all experience emotionally impactful events at some point in our lives, whether it is in the form of failure, disappointment, or heartbreak. But knowing that it happens to everyone doesn’t make it any easier to deal with once it is staring us in the face.
It isn’t realistic to expect that we can somehow fortify ourselves to the point of not experiencing negative emotions. It would be abnormal if we didn’t feel them, and it’s unhealthy to suppress them. However, learning to minimize the impact of negative situations is a very realistic goal.
When negative events occur, we all have different ways of expressing the accompanying emotions. But when it comes to the intensity and duration of these feelings, it has more to do with the way we perceive these events than with the events themselves. Therefore, one of the most important skills to develop is the ability to maintain a realistic perspective.
Perspective is very important when it comes to managing emotions. Think about the way a magnifying glass works – it enlarges the object of study. In addition to making the object larger, it also distorts its proportions – as with the face of our friend in the photo above.
When it comes to the negative events in our lives, many of us have a tendency to do the same; we magnify a negative situation to where it becomes larger than it needs to be, and our perception of its impact becomes disproportionate to the other areas of our lives. Therefore, managing the negative impact begins with managing our perspective.
How do we accomplish this?
There are 5 key things to remember which can help us to maintain a realistic perspective:
- Our lives are comprised of collective experiences, and ONE experience does not define the whole. Over the course of a lifetime, one experience is like a drop in a pool of experiences. We shouldn’t give one experience more importance than is truly warranted.
- Consider the concept of impermanence; nothing is fixed or permanent. The same is true regarding negative situations. Regardless of how bad it may seem, we must maintain the understanding that what we are feeling is temporary, and that the discomfort won’t last forever. Keep in mind the saying, “this too shall pass.”
- Know the difference between discomfort and catastrophe. We shouldn’t assign extreme values to normal emotions (i.e., catastrophize). It is acceptable to acknowledge that we are upset (sad, angry, frustrated, etc.), but to use the word “devastated” would be an exaggeration.
- Don’t overgeneralize. Experiencing a failure does not mean we ARE a failure, nor does it mean that we will continue to fail. Additionally, just because one situation has gone bad, we shouldn’t generalize that everything else is bad (e.g., “My girlfriend left me . . . my entire life sucks.”).
- Most of us experience more good than bad in our lives. Therefore, when facing failures and disappointments, we should remind ourselves of our competencies and previous accomplishments. We should learn to acknowledge the good things in our lives, so that we don’t place a disproportionate focus on the bad.
When we maintain perspective, we increase our ability to manage negative situations more positively. We can’t anesthetize ourselves from feeling normal emotions. However, using the key concepts above, we can better manage the way we process them, which can minimize the negative impact. Maintaining a proper perspective allows us to see these events as they really are – through a realistic lens, without the distortions of a magnifying glass.