Mind games we play

I think it was Covey that first taught me that we have a lot more control and power over how we react to things than over the things that get thrown our way.  It was about 25 years ago that I read that but the concept has taken a sweet old time to finally sink in.  Of course we have more control over what we do than with what others do to us and not only we have that control but we can actually choose from multiple ways we can respond to it.  And respond we will.  There is not choice in that.  One way or another we will react.

I remember a few years ago that I was having a deep conversation with a friend of mine in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  He was recently divorced and living a life that on the outside looked like having a lot of fun but as he later confessed, in the inside it was actually more painful than he showed.  As I also confessed insecurities and uncertainties of my midlife, he told me “Orlando, if you wanted to, you could be divorced within a year from now”.  It’s not that he wanted me to be divorced or that I had told him that I wanted to get divorce he just said that to tell me that in his own life both of them had drifted apart and in a way made the choice to make their own separate lives and within the year he was a divorced man.

That’s very powerful.  I could be a divorced man like my friend was.  I could also be in a mediocre marriage.  But I could also be happily married.  It was my choice.

Of course, in this particular example it does take “two to tangle” as they say.  Both of them had to decide the same path or one of them would be unhappy about being driven to that unhappy end.  But if they both chose to give up, then they both ended it ended where they knew it would have.

The point is that I have a choice to make.   If I know that something can make me bitter, then its easy to brew up some poison that you can caress for months until you end up where you knew you’d end up.  But if you, knowing that the bitterness affects you more than anyone else, choose health instead, you will choose to react in a way that will take you where you want to be.

Last week I had an opportunity to practice what I’m preaching.  I was enjoying Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and was almost saying that it had become one of my favorite Southeast Asian cities.  Until a couple of thugs tried to rob of that experience.  They succeeded in robbing me of a few personal possessions such as my wallet containing money and credit cards, but I don’t want to let them rob me of my whole experience in the city.  Why could they have that much power that they would ruin my trip to Vietnam?  I refuse to give them that much.  They took the wallet, but that’s all I will let them take with them. 

My experience in Vietnam and my reaction to their indecency are mine.  And I will choose to do what is right for me.   I will continue to think that 99% of the people of Vietnam are just going about their business trying to make a decent living.  I will continue to have good memories of the country and its cities.  Yes, for a time I will probably be more aware of potential danger and guard myself a little closer.  But I refuse to suddenly define my experience in Vietnam on what those two did to me.  It is my choice if I want to continue giving them of myself, and I chose that it was enough already.

It’s taking me a few years but I hope it’s finally sinking in.