Do we want to live a life of fear or of opportunities?
Everyday we are immersed by a cloud of apocalypses and dramas. It starts when we open our news apps in the morning, where everyday we are confronted with the latest crisis and the horrific stories of the media that project dooms day scenarios for the world. The old rule still stands, bad stories sell much better than good ones.
The downside is, that the constant stream of horror news coming into our ear does something with us. It influences us consciously but more importantly unconsciously over time. While we cannot influence what stream of news will come towards us from our surrounding, we can actively influence how we deal with them and what actions we take in response.
One option, which is easy and which most of us therefore easily buy into, is to constantly experience fear and anxiety, every time another apocalyptic scenario comes our way, our feeling of fear and being threatened in our existence becomes stronger. Over time, we build a wall around us, live in our bubble, and see the outside world as a dark place of threats. In the end, we will feel lonely and not fulfilled. This option therefore seems like a pretty grim and unattractive way of life to most of us. The good news, there is another option, which however, is the more difficult path to choose.
This other option is harder, as it requires us to become active and make bold choices which very often will not be compatible with the mainstream. So what? The option will be harder, but it will also make us happier. Rather than building up a wall of fear around us that eventually will overwhelm us, we can choose to see obstacles that come our way as great opportunities to learn, develop and progress. As mentioned before, we cannot influence natural disaster hitting us every day, but we can change our attitude and mindset towards them. Rather than buying into dooms day scenarios, we have to step back, look at our own day to day life and realize, once we access the effects of those scenarios on our own day to day life, that things for us don’t look too bad after all. The idea is of course not to ignore all the problems of the world, but to put things into perspective, if we get overwhelmed with potential horror scenarios of life.
Another important part is to live in the moment. It is very hard to predict the future, and people tend to get lost in predicting worst case future scenarios, which might never happen. We very often frankly don’t know. We will be happier of we live in the moment, rather than thinking too hart about all the bad things can potentially happen tomorrow. It is however good to generally think about the future, just not from the point of fear and things getting worst, but from the perspective of all the plans and opportunities we will see coming our way.
We therefore have a choice, do we live a life in fear, or do we life a life where we challenge ourselves, develop and make the best out of identifying and reacting to opportunities that we are faced with in an ever-transforming world around us. We must train our mind to not only function on fear and anxiety but on curiosity, openness, interest, and flexibility to help us feel excited rather than afraid about the future.
The good news, ever single one of us has a choice, we only have to choose which path, the easy one or the more difficult one of seeing a bright future, full of opportunities with choices, that often go against the mainstream.
