drwex | Journaling project, Day 26 (Reply)

A tiny part of your life is decided by uncontrollable circumstances, while the vast majority of it is decided by your perspective of these circumstances. Let this sink in. Regardless of what’s going on around you, peace of mind arrives the moment you come to peace with what’s on your mind.

What is one reality you need to come to peace with? Why?

In the original prompt there's a link to this: http://www.marcandangel.com/2018/06/10/3-hard-perspective-shifts-that-will-gradually-make-your-life-3-times-easier/ - an article that falls squarely in the "if you just think right thoughts then you'll realize things are OK" camp. Where's my blowtorch?

I mean, sure. I'll buy that gratitude is an important part of mental health. Expressing things you are grateful for, and expressing gratitude to other people, has been shown to have a positive effect on outlook. But then again, so does doing good works, or making a meaningful social connections. Focusing on one of these over the others seems like... well, slanted BS. Gratitude isn't magic, it's part of a holistic mental health regime, at most.

And yes, I agree that it's destructive to fixate on fantasies about how things should be and unrealistic self-negation for not obtaining these fantasies is definitely detrimental. And so on and so on. It's not that I disagree with the underlying attitude (*) - it's that I disagree that perspective is the "vast majority" of peace of mind. As I said above, I think for me it's the difference between a holistic approach to mental health that reduces negative habits (fixation, self-negation), increases positive ones (mindfulness, gratitude, etc.) but that also incorporates other elements of lifestyle. Healthy eating, proper exercise and sleep, attention to relationships with other people such as building your social network and integrating well with your work teams... Et cetera. I don't think any one of these is a silver bullet nor can I subscribe to any "vast majority" assertion.

I worry that an approach that says "you should be thinking happy thoughts" negates peoples' needs to process and experience their lives. In one example from the link above, a family who lost everything in a fire is cited. If they are able to be happy about their situation then great for them. But there's also a well-understood set of negative effects that come when people do not properly express or work through negative emotions. Grief at such a major loss, anxiety and worry about a suddenly uncertain future - those seem like normal and healthy responses to a major negative life event. Telling these people, or really anyone, that all they need to do is think happy thoughts and that's the "vast majority" of what's going on seems to me like a prescription for unrealistic response that can be long-term harmful.

Me personally - I tend to think of myself as a reality-based individual. Some people tell me that leads to me being overly negative. If anything, then, my problem is the opposite of the challenge posed here.

I'm away Thu/Fri so the next update (and maybe

(*) Except again it hides the underlying assumption that we can somehow (magically?) tell the difference between mentally harmful fantasies that we'll never obtain and hard goals that we should get motivated to achieve. If you've got a reliable formula for telling those two apart, please share it.