This Is How You Should Perceive Life

Looking at life from a different pair of glasses

Photo by timJ on Unsplash

I am sure most of us have experienced days when things just don’t seem to go our way. Days when disappointments litter our entire experience. Which sometimes brings up a very interesting question. Why do we feel disappointed? Is it because of our current expectations are not being met? or is it because someone just came and ruined our day? I am sure everyone has their own reasons for feeling disappointed. I know I have.

I don’t know about you, but I have one of the most unique ways to cope with disappointments. I like to link things that cause disappointments in my life to the things I do every day. What I mean is, I like to take a personal systematic perspective on things. Maybe you’ve heard about empathy, the way I think about problems is heavily influenced by empathy. I’ll try to explain how I view things in depth.

Perception of others

First of all, try to examine your feelings when you feel disappointed. Why do you feel that way? What caused it? This may sound trivial but things that may cause you to feel disappointed might correspond to a lot of people in the world. Examining that can help explore your deep empathy for others understanding future situations better.

Second of all after you feel disappointed or hurt, What do you need? What are you hoping to get from your friends and loved ones? This helps you take another step further on the empathy train.

“Treat others as to how you want to be treated yourself”

Try to be the person you needed when you were disappointed, give to the people who need your fullest attention, this will help you understand things from a lot of different perspectives. First of all, you will have a chance to understand from a listeners perspective, you will understand how it feels like to listen to stories that sometimes don’t concern you. You will learn how every listener feels and how difficult it is to patiently listen to other people.

After understanding the listeners perspective try to emphasize the talkers perspective. When you are talking, analyze the listeners’ behaviors that make you feel uncomfortable. For example when they choose to play with their smartphones when you are in the middle of your story or how they talk over you. Remember these moments so you would understand what not to do in these situations.

Another example, imagine you are in the midst of a conversation with a friend and you accidentally struck his nerve. He took offense to what you said, and you are confused as to why he is offended.

Now, in this type of situation, I would repeat what I said in my head with various intonations, usually how we say things really affect how other people perceive us. A simple sentence like “What are you doing?” when said with different tones can sound either questioning, challenging, or infuriating.

If intonation wasn’t the case then try to examine the situation, did your words ruin a moment or embarrassed the guy in front of his friends? Try to put yourself in his shoes, understanding his part of the story, acknowledge that you may have made a mistake.

Obligation is false

No one on this earth is obligated to do what you want them to do neither are you obligated to do what they expect of you. This mindset might sound selfish at first, but it corresponds with the basic nature of humans which is selfishness itself. A lot of quotes on the internet might emphasize that we need to be nice to other people. That is not actually the case, you don’t have to be nice to other people.

What do they have on you? Were they nice to you? Are they your friends? Why on earth do we even have to be nice to anyone?!

Though it’s kind of depressing knowing that people don’t have to be nice to you. Well look at the bright side, you should realize that you are responsible for your own happiness, you don’t have to care about anything. Nothing in this world can hold back your happiness.

”You are responsible for how you feel and you should feel empowered by that!”

On a happier note, by realizing there is no such thing as an obligation to please your fellow human, you should be more grateful with the fact that there are still nice people in the world. People who chose to live solely for others, people who chose to do the right thing rather than what benefits them, and especially people who care and love you because they are not really obligated to do such things. You should be grateful when someone helps you heck you should be grateful when a random person in the street smiles or greet you when you pass by them. Realizing this can really give you an aspect of how genuine a person can be.

”Happiness can be achieved by a grateful attitude and a humble heart, as obligatory kindness is a lie and true kindness can be found all around you”

This empathic systematic perspective of life, of course, has its’ side effects, like all things have their own pros and cons this new way of perceiving situations may give you situations where you feel like the most terrible person in the world because of everything you have done. You will remember all your past mistakes, all of your past regrets, and it may be overwhelming at times. Because of your ability to assume empathy, you may feel guilty for even the simplest of mistakes. When your highly sensitive emotions take control, you must muster some common sense and relax. Try to understand that you are being overly empathetic and this behavior is no longer helping you understand others but destroying your own self-esteem. What I am implying is that you not let your empathy control you. Humans are egoistic by nature, and that keeps us safe, keeps us comfortable, and healthy. Remember that! It’s okay to understand others but never let your perceptions overwhelm you.

From the statements I put out above, you can summarize that perceiving life is like looking at a half filled glass. You can either say the glass is half full or half empty, you can choose what you believe to be true.