Factors you can control

I have been deeply saddened by the pain and suffering that I observe in the faces of some of our fellow neighbors these days. I would like to help in a very minute way by sharing my thoughts and research with you and illuminate some insights as to how some can remain strong when faced with adversity. I often wondered when faced with hard conditions, why do some people break down while others endure and even prosper once the blizzard has passed? No one is immune to hardship, but some people appear to be better able to handle and pull through from even the most exhausting circumstances. I found out that it is not really a secret. Some minor mental adjustments can provide significant results. Here are just a few ideas.

Control your mind: Control implies having command and being able to affect one's own life, while being a victim implies being helpless and vulnerable. No matter what your situation, there are always factors you can control, and those you can't. The key is to concentrate on the things you can control. Make two lists. A list of all the things that are worrying you and then make a list of all the things you can do to make each circumstance better. Accept the items on the first list as bitter facts (they are what they are) and focus your energy on the next list. Do not waste your resources on the first list. You may find it challenging at first. But with some practice and discipline soon you learn to control the focus of your mind.

Control your attitude: Victor Frankl is one of the people that I highly respect. He was a esteemed Austrian psychiatrist. As a Jewish political prisoner, he was repeatedly subjected to physical torment, isolation, and a constant barrage of dehumanizing treatment. Against all odds he survived the Holocaust. In his book “man’s search for meaning”, Frankl creates a vivid image of his horrible ordeal in the Nazi concentration camp. He said that one of the keys to survival was choosing the right attitude. Frankl wrote, “The one thing they (Nazi) can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what is being done to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.

Focus on the ones you love: Frankl also adds that “The salvation of man is through love and in love”. He expands, (I am paraphrasing) through his darkest hours he understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know happiness, be it only for a brief moment, in the thought of his beloved. In a position of complete despair, when one cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position a person can, through loving reflection of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. He then beautifully adds, “For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory..”

Focus on helping others: Even if we ourselves are affected by the economic down turn, we must turn part of our focus from us toward others that have been affected more than us. As Victor Frankl put it "We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." Regardless of what is happening to him.

I don’t mention Frankl’s story to make light of current job loss or job insecurity in our community and beloved country. I do understand that these are trying times in our global village. But I think we can learn from Frankl’s experience. If a positive attitude is vital to staying alive in some of the worst conditions known to man, surely it can be equally instrumental in these challenging times. We must never forget that our attitude is always a personal choice not a result of circumstances.

I would like to end this article by a couple of quotes from Charles R. Swindoll. He says, “I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day-to-day basis is my choice of attitude. It is more important than my past, my education, my bankroll, my successes or failures, fame or pain, what other people think of me or say about me, my circumstances, or my position. Attitude keeps me going or cripples my progress. It alone fuels my fire or assaults my hope. When my attitudes are right, there is no barrier too high, no valley too deep, no dream too extreme, and no challenge too great for me.” He believes in order to control our attitude we must change our perspective. We must see challenges as opportunities. He encourages people to see impossible situations as brilliantly disguised great opportunities. My favorite quote of Chuck Swindoll is, “We cannot change our past. We can not change the fact that people act in a certain way. We can not change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.”