Perspective is Everything, So Change Your Perspective & Change Your Life

Why is it that some people are disturbed by another gossiping about them, while another person would be unfazed? Why is it that some people are disturbed by someone's lateness to a meeting, while, again, another person is completely fine with this? You could write off the people who aren't disturbed by situations or happenings that are commonly construed as disturbing, as apathetic at best, or more likely: carefree and maybe a little bit dumb. But what if these people are on to something.

"People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them." - Epictetus, Enchiridion

The quote above is one worthy of allowing time to thaw. Think on it for a moment. 

What is at the root of our discomfort about particular events or happenings? No matter the situation, we have been socialized to assign negative feelings to some situations, and positive feelings to others. This allows us to coast, as though on autopilot, a piece in a broader game in which you don't make up the rules, and hope to win. What if your baseline level of wellness didn't depend on anything outside of yourself? How could that possibly be? Would you have to become so disconnected, and self-centered that the opinion of your family and friends, and especially strangers, cease to matter to you? Or would it mean you're more connected to those people because you're not assigning harsh judgement that would attract or deflect those relationships?

There's a difference between caring and internalizing. A characteristically "bad" thing can happen to us, in front of us, and we internalize the unsettled feeling that makes us want to run or hide. What if we instead experienced every insult, every slight, and every failure, with the same weight as brushing our teeth or driving to the mall? As a part of life that doesn't need to linger in our minds, and can be taken in stride. Sometimes we experience this in retrospect, weeks, months or even years after an incident.

"What was I so worried about back then?" you think to yourself. "It was all so silly, and has no relevance to my life now, but it did back then because I focused on it so much. Resisted it." Perspective is everything.