The Start Of Another Day: Chapter VI-Part3-

  It has come to my attention that -thus far- I’ve found that being neutral and avoiding to get involved in other people’s problems, and likewise, not getting people involved in issues that should not concern them, has been the most beneficial route for me, many people (my past self included) tend to believe that they need to get involved in their entourage’s issues and do their best to solve them, however, that could be quite counterproductive for the sole reason that your advice might not necessarily benefit those people, besides the fact that forceful advice tends to cause a lot of discomfort to the other person and might turn him off from doing as you advised. You should not forget that many other people will be giving their suggestions, which could differ quite a bit from yours leaving that person confused even more as to how to solve the issue. A prime example of this is getting involved in other people’s way of raising their children, if too many people get involved in it, the child will have contradictory notions about many things which would only confuse him later on. If someone follows every advice given by people in his surroundings, it would ultimately lead to some quite disappointing results. If someone asks for your advice, what you should do first and foremost is analyze his situation carefully and then make it clear to him that this advice you gave him is what you think will work best for him, but that does not mean that it would necessarily help him, that is of course if you want to get involved. It should be important to note that neutrality cannot be absolute as I’ve stated before, you cannot always keep a distance from every single person you know and not get involved at all in their lives for a multitude of reasons we’re all familiar with, in spite of that, you should always know when to disengage from a situation where you feel like your boundaries are being pushed too far, that is of course if you haven’t done anything that could prevent you from doing so. As a human being you will pushed in many situations where you cannot simply disengage, mainly relating to your involvement with that person and dependence on him, which is why it is always preferable to have a personal space  that even the people close to you cannot enter, figuratively speaking of course.

     Every one of us has internal struggles that need to be dealt with on a daily basis, as the famous proverb goes: «you can beat your inner demons, but you can never kill them” , there are mainly two ways in which  people deal with personality traits that they dislike about themselves as I’ve seen so far, the first one being change, which requires a decent amount of willpower depending on how intrusive this trait is in your life-style. Change is, in my opinion, a mandatory course of action we all go through one way or another, it can vastly improve your life-style depending on what you consider as being better for you, however, this method would appear to be quite inefficient if it is the only one used. I firmly believe that you cannot change everything about yourself in a way that suits you, since doing so would lead you to having to repress many aspects of your personality which would often lead to unhappiness, in that case, it’s much more favorable to use the second method that people resort to in order to deal with their flaws, which is far more appropriate than change in many cases, it is acceptance of course, which is, in short, accepting those traits that you find mildly inconvenient for you. A perfect mixture of these two methods from your perspective would help you significantly, though it still depends on your personality.

      One thing that I view as being very unfortunate and very concerning is our inability to accept other people’s opinions fully: even if we pretend to accept and respect them, in reality, we never place them on an equal footing with our views and acknowledge that even though different, the views expressed by other people are the result of them finding the perspective that fits them the most in life in that period of time (because of course, views are prone to change), we ourselves shouldn’t be thinking that our views are certainly “better” than other people’s, since even if “better opinions” existed, we shouldn’t underestimate how unaware we might be and the amount of information that we do not know. How I see it, one should never feel superiority because of his views on different matters, nor should anyone disrespect a group of people because of their unusual or seemingly absurd opinions, since disrespect Is most definitely not going to change their opinions nor has it ever made a positive change from my perspective, trying to understand where they are coming from is a much more beneficial approach that could lead to the avoidance of misunderstandings and the spread of misinformation about their point of view, all the while diffusing the situation if it is needed. Diversity in opinions is inevitable, and no matter how seemingly harmful or negative some opinions might be on us, they are supposed to exist and they have a purpose to serve, whether be it as a balance mechanism or as a chain reaction starter; many times in history, some very controversial opinions made great changes, why would we consider the case now to be different?

    Many times, I find that we are overly obsessed with labels and names, we are too focused on names and adjectives, “good husband” , “dedicated worker “ , “manly” ,”terrorist” ,”bad person” , we just use them to classify people instead of realizing that everyone has his own circumstances and nuances when it comes to the attribute at hand, as I’ve said before , words like “good” and “bad” are too simple to explain a complex situation or a human being for that matter, the same goes for the other labels as well, and that is something we mustn’t forget, even though labels are a useful mechanism of communication, they are far from being ideal. In addition, being infatuated with labels is oftentimes a sign of insecurity, especially when we are talking about a profession or a hobby, where you want people to view you as a practitioner of that activity, instead of actually focusing on improving yourself without beating yourself every time you fail because you are less likely to be acknowledged by other people.

    Loneliness, many people feel this emotion when being far apart from others, however, what a decent amount of people do not realize is that loneliness isn’t necessarily felt when others are absent, you can feel just as lonely all the while being surrounded by other people, this is mostly the case when you fail to connect with people in your surroundings and refuse to accept them. This could be a very unhealthy behavior that could potentially ruin your social life for two main reasons, one being that it simply isn’t realistic to expect people to agree with you on everything to be able to accept them and get closer to them, since the odds of finding someone that is perfect according to your criteria is very unlikely and waiting for “that one special person” isn’t necessarily the best way to deal with this loneliness, that aside you should not feel the need to have someone agree with you in the first place:  just because you agree on many things does not imply that you have the same interests and preferences or that you have  compatible personalities, as I’ve mentioned before in this chapter, sometimes preferences precede opinions when it comes to  relationships with other people. Taking that into consideration, you should definitely know how and when to set your barriers and when to distance yourself from other people according to your compatibility with them, and of course, this is by no means insinuating that you must befriend anyone and everyone; if someone’s preferences and views cause you harm, you are in no way obliged to keep them in your social circle. Feeling the need to be agreed with (even though very common) is sometimes a sign that you are letting your insecurities do the thinking for you, something that has helped me go through that is to simply believe in your judgement, even if just a little bit more. In that sense, the only person whose judgement should be crucial to you is yourself, after all, you are the only one that knows almost the whole story behind you, in addition, you should always encourage yourself and pump yourself up instead of beating yourself over and over knowing that it would never make you improve; you should be able to support yourself without the need of others, and this is besides learning how to deal with your problems on your own. You should not feel afraid to be alone, since you will be at one point in your life no matter how well accompanied you are. You cannot rely on your surroundings for everything since that, in itself, compromises your ability to be free and independent in addition to getting people into your problems which is a very harmful habit. The people around you should always be on an equal footing with you, think of them and yourself as parallel lines that are close to each other but never cross, encouraging and pushing each other forward but never interfering with the other’s development, all the while not relying on each other to advance, since a relationship between two people where someone is relying on the other constantly is bound to fail. This is not to say that you should never ask your friends for help, there are situation where you will feel inclined to do so, but do not forget that they are in no way obliged to help you just because you’ve befriended them, moreover, you should be aware of how much you are burdening them and you should avoid doing so too much, especially knowing that even the most unrealistically ideal friends will not be able to support you every time you need support. In conclusion, being independent is an essential part of a healthy life style.

    To conclude this chapter I want to address a very important issue here that people tend to neglect, an issue that has many negative consequences on your happiness and on your social life as well as potentially being the reason behind many conflicts and misunderstandings, this issue is very persistent and hard to solve: this issue is overthinking. Overthinking unlike most of the other issues we might encounter, is pretty self-explanatory, that does not make it any less complicated to dive into however. Overthinking is a thinking habit that causes you to think profusely and excessively about most matters, it is in a way the bane of every student while passing exams. The main problem with overthinking is that it forces you to overreact in way that rarely benefits you: it makes you visualize a large number of different unrealistic scenarios that end up never occurring; this is very problematic because not only is overthinking sapping your energy, making you waste it and your time on unhelpful thoughts, but it also causes you to “over-shoot” and miss the more functional solutions for a problem. Overthinking can harm your relationships more than anything else from my viewpoint, it is that unnecessary amount of thought that leads to misunderstandings and therefore to conflicts and distrust, eventually causing constant stress and worry about arguably insignificant duds. It is worth mentioning that overthinking your future plans is, in my opinion, by far the most harmful shape of overthinking, it can cause you immense unhappiness thinking about millions of scenarios for an uncertain future, not to mention that, as you already know, it is very much useless. I personally believe that one should learn to improvise a bit in life, not everything should be planned in advance since that mentality makes you very dependent on plans, much like how being a Germaphobe makes you more prone to contracting diseases because of a weakened immune system that doesn’t do its job frequently  enough, this is especially accurate when we talk about moral decisions, I used to think a lot about what I would do if I were put in certain absurd situation where it could be hard to be morally correct (according to my ethics of course),however I’ve come to notice that most of these scenarios do not happen and that thinking was effectively useless(this is not to say that it was a complete waste of course, since that is something I do not believe in, in the end, at least I learned  not to overthink those matters), a better alternative is to learn how to improvise and think quickly whenever you are faced with a difficult situation, while fully aware of the circumstances that are involved and acting accordingly, this saves you from the guilt that you might feel when you fail to do exactly as you imagined in the scenario that was playing in your head, in which you did not take into account any of the circumstances that might influence you in that situation (such as your state of mind). That aside, you wouldn’t be able to think about every situation anyway, in addition, who knows if you’ll be able to stick to what you think is correct if your mood changes and the circumstances differ? The point is, even though sometimes having things planned out is quite famously known for being helpful, you shouldn’t neglect the importance of improvisation, you should also not adopt any behaviors that get in the way of your happiness, which is something this whole book revolves around .