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Learning from Negativity

The Comfort Zone

If there is one emotional response that rivals the human instinct to survive, it is the average human's drive to remain within the normal and comfortable. Situations that are confusing or that threaten our comfort zone are labeled as being "bad" or at least "negative," which amounts to the same thing.

The collective consciousness of our culture appears to be that poverty, physical pain, unfavorable circumstances, mean people and being forced to eat your vegetables are horridly negative things that must be eradicated from human experience if we are to mature and grow.

Watching network news and reading the major news journals, one is led to believe that a great majority of people in our nation are victims: people whom, through no choice of their own, have suffered at the hands of someone else. This, of course, is a "bad" thing that our federal and state governments must eradicate through passing laws and establishing social programs for the victims.

Somewhere along the line we have adopted the belief that life should be easy and comfortable for every living soul. Life should come to us with no chocolate mess. There are to be no barriers along the way, nothing standing in the way of our goals, no one to aggravate us or go contrary to our beliefs of "how-things-are-to-be-done." This may be the way we wish for life to come to us, but it is not the way life here on earth plays out.

"Turning Lemons into Lemonade"

Life happens. This may come as a shock to some people, but we cannot control how life shows up--only how we respond to it. The child who is physically abused by her parents could not control what happened to her. The woman who was abandoned by her husband cannot change that fact. The man who just was told his company was downsizing and that he was no longer employed cannot change the tides of the market place or how his company will respond to these currents.

We cannot control what life gives us--only how we respond to it.

I know a man who lost his parents when he was just 6 and lived as a homeless child on the streets of New York City for the next 7 years and yet he is an incredibly successful man in every context of his life. When you meet him you would think that his life had to have been idyllic from childhood on.

I know another man whose father yelled at him, but who otherwise provided him with food, care, a nice house and a college education. This man is weak and ineffective in most every context of his life, blaming his father for making him a timid person. What is the difference here?

Choices

We cannot choose how life unfolds before us. We can, however, choose how we will respond. We can allow our so-called negative circumstances to cripple and emotionally enslave us, or we can choose to bow before them as our teachers.

The beggar can sit in the mud feeling sorry for himself and screaming at the circumstances that led him to the mud or he can say, "Hey, whining will not put food on the table. I best clean myself up and go learn something of value that I can sell in the market place."

Of course our society sees the beggar and rushes in to underwrite his weakness by giving him enough money to see to it that he doesn't have to deal with his weakness, thus ensuring he will live with it until the day he dies. And why would government officials do such a thing? There are many reasons, but one of them is that they too have adopted the belief that life should come easy to everyone.

You cannot change the fact that your parents were physically abusive or that you were never taught the importance of education. You can choose to allow such past circumstances to motivate you to strengthen yourself where you are weak or you can choose to indulge in self-pity and marry your weaknesses.

How to Greet Negative Circumstances

Your life journey is going to include many circumstances that you would probably not have chosen, had you been given a vote. No one "wants" to face a fire-breathing dragon, but the fact remains that the dragon is there and must be killed if you are to make progress.

One of the first things you must do when facing a dragon is to remember that the dragon's presence is not necessarily a commentary on your relationship with God.

Now fighting the dragon may strengthen your relationship with Him, but that is not the same as saying that the presence of the dragon means you are a bad person. All it says is that dragons exist.

Many people consistently see negative circumstances as some sort of divine evaluation of their character. "I must be a bad person because these bad circumstances wouldn't have occurred had I been good." Jesus lived through some pretty challenging circumstances--was He a bad person?

What if your circumstances are due to a breach of morality? Okay. Then ask God's forgiveness, make restitution wherever possible…and move on. Even in these circumstances, the individual can retard his or her progress by self-pity and remorse. Such emotional states are not virtuous and will not serve their quest one bit.

A very valuable tool for your quest is the ability to disassociate from the immediacy and subjectivity of the circumstances surrounding you. When you learn to step back and detach from a situation so as to make a more objective evaluation of the circumstances you will have made incredible progress on your way.

If a married couple comes to me wanting my counsel in a marital dispute, what would be the most helpful perspective for me to adopt? Should I allow myself to be hypnotized by one or both of their stories or should I detach myself so as to evaluate each of their perspectives, and then to look at and evaluate the situation from many other angles? The second tactic will be far more helpful, won't it?

So what do I do now?

One of the things we discover upon learning to take a step back from the urgency of the pain, fear, anger or confusion we are immersed in is that we are able to more readily see how the so-called negative situation can be used for our benefit. Now, instead of it being an impediment to our progress it is seen as a teacher to strengthen us for the journey. It may possibly even be something to ignore and walk around (some dragons are none of our business). But it's impossible to see a situation from multiple perspectives while standing in or under the circumstances.

How can we grow if we don't learn from our weaknesses?

One of the stupidities of our ego is its insistence upon striving to play only to its strengths and avoiding at all costs even the appearance of weakness. How will we ever grow as humans, however, if we allow this to go on? If we never explore or exercise areas of weakness, how are we going to expand and mature? The Lord of our Quest knows this and allows "teachers" to come our way that can usurp and over rule our egos and, thereby, strengthen our weaknesses.

The next time you experience less than favorable circumstances, don't simply throw your hands in the air in disbelief, despairing of your "luck". Take a giant step back and consider the incredible opportunities for growth and wisdom that have just been offered to you!

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Read more articles on this subject:

Do Your Best, Forget the Rest

12 Steps to Joy

Eliminating Obstacles to Your Success

Written by
Dr. Monte E. Wilson, III
Andrea Higham, Editor
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