I am accused of seeing the world through Rose Colored Glasses. After fifty eight years on this planet and having been through as many challenges, if not more than most, I am still more of an idealist than a realist. I have had my share of adverse situations, but as I look back on them I believe that I created them myself. I have come to view new challenges and situations as opportunities to grow and to show up as the person I should be.
It’s impossible for you to solve any challenge while remaining the same person who most likely brought it on. Daily, you are faced with some lesser and some greater challenges. You easily navigate your way over, through, or around the lesser ones and some of your greater challenges sometimes seem like a great mystery or almost insurmountable. But you excel and you find solutions and you win.
What color is the lens that you see through?
You see your world in a unique way because no one has had the same exact experience that you have had. You have that filter, that lens, which all of your thoughts and experiences have created. There is no color code, nor a formula to duplicate your filter or lens. Only you know its secret formula and only you can understand it fully.
Even in your wildest dreams and in your most profound thoughts, you still cannot express your perspective so that another person would see the world like you do. If another person could see what you see and feel what you feel in the exact same way, then they could become you. It is impossible. No one could ever be you. That is how unique you are.
As you come across new situations and challenges, you also have new opportunities to become more. You become more by solving novel solutions to your challenges. Remember that these solutions are novel to you. Although other people may have generated the same solution, you must go through the same process in order to learn it hence; it becomes a novel solution for you.
When you face a new challenge or a seemingly bleak situation, you have two choices; you can focus on the pain, the darkness, or the negative, or you can choose to focus on the light, the positive, and the solution. So your first step is how you perceive your situation. You can either choose to be a victim or you can choose to be a survivor.
Two years after Hurricane Katrina, I talked to a man whose home was completely destroyed by the flood waters. He and his wife relocated to Atlanta and the way he identified himself was as a Katrina victim. Two years after the event, he still saw himself as a “victim”, yet his wife saw herself as a “survivor”. At that moment I thought that he was very fortunate to have a wife with such a strong constitution and the will to overcome adverse situations.
When you have an adverse situation, you can either choose to see it as a problem and see yourself as a victim, or you can use the language of a survivor and see it as a challenge or an opportunity to grow. “Problem” connotes a feeling of negativity and that you have this seemingly insurmountable hitch, predicament, or enigma with little possibility for solution. When you see it as a challenge or an opportunity, then in your mind you are already one step closer to winning with a solution.
Here are a few recommendations when you find yourself in a challenging situation:
- Control your thoughts and words so that they lead you toward possibilities and solutions.
- Remember that almost any situation or experience that we encounter, someone else has been there and survived and overcome it successfully.
- Remember that as dark as your situation seems, someone else has it far worse than you do and they are surviving in their own circumstances.
I welcome your comments and constructive criticism.
Sincerely,
Leo