Truly, after some thought, I had to agree, and apply personally, that the combined states of one's heart and mind crucially determines how much one can gain from events in life, and thus determines how far one will go in the long run.
Let me illustrate with an example.
Perhaps there's this social studies project that your teacher wants you to do, and that she expects you to give a report on. However, this assignment carries no extra marks for your major exams whatsoever and is more of an enhancement activity. The instructions for the project is simple enough: you were asked to go and teach any main subject in a kindergarten for a day and report your experiences back in class.
Now, let's assume that there are two fictional students in the situation I just mentioned earlier, and we'll call them 'A' and 'B'. Both students know that they need to do this project and report their experiences, and they went ahead and did it. Both had no prior experience in teaching, let alone dealing with kids. But that's where their similarities end.
Student A is pretty smart, and he is even one of the top scorers in class. However, in the area of dealing with little ones, he has zero experience. He has previously developed preconceived notions of children: that they are troublesome, they won't pay attention to people, and you have to bribe them to answer a question that you ask. Therefore, he thinks that the project is actually a waste of his weekend time that otherwise could be used for more interesting activities. So, on the day of the project, he grudgingly goes to the kindergarten with some friends, who are equally reluctant to do this, and does the activities that he had planned. When the kids make noise or come to him with seemingly troublesome requests, he ignores them or asks someone else to deal with them. At the end of the day, he goes back to prepare his report just as he was required to do, wishing that the kids were let off earlier so that he can go home faster.
Student B is pretty bright too, but he's not as bright in class as Student A. Like his classmate, he too has no previous experience in dealing with kids. However, he is willing to learn more about it. So, before the day of the project, he does some research on not only what to teach kids, but how to teach them effectively by surfing the Net, as well as ask the opinions of his teachers and parents, whom he knew have first hand kid-rearing experiences. (They all do -- after all, we were once kids too!) On the day of the project, he collaborates with his friends, assigning them various tasks to do based on their individual areas of strength, and motivates them to do it as they will learn new and beneficial things. The team worked together with the kids, and at the end of the day, everyone was tired, but they had a good time getting to know the little ones that they met.
Guess who, in the end, gave a better report, and more importantly, gained the most, both personally and in terms of contribution to others? In my opinion, it is student B.
Both students were given the exact same task to do. However, Student A chose to take the task at hand as unimportant and unworthy of his time, whereas Student B decided to take the task as a new challenge and learn it first-hand. Both students started with a choice of aptitude (how we feel about something) and attitude (what we think about something), and their initial choices determined their altitude (the outcome and its effect on them thereof).
Inevitably, we experience both positive and negative attitudes when a new task or challenge comes our way. If we like what we are about to do, we experience positive reinforcement, and vice versa. But even with that there are negative attitudes that come with positive events (i.e if you were asked to sing on stage, which is what you absolutely love to do, but then anxiety and stage fright start to enter the picture...get me?) and the other way around too.
However, what determines the outcome isn't so much how we feel or think, but how we choose to react to what we feel and think.
We can choose to take every experience, no matter how boring, unpleasant, or unappealing it my be, and turn it into a lesson that we can learn from life. We can either not bother to do a certain task well, and just drag our feet throughout the entire process, or we can give it our all and learn something, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant that thing may be, that can be applied in our daily lives. And in the end, everyone benefits from how we choose to react to the situations in our life.
There was this time I learned that we should use the word 'saya' in addressing oneself when talking to elders instead of 'aku', and that happened while I was talking (or more accurately, pouring out my troubles) to a teacher about something else. And until now, I remember it clearly...and my BM has improved a little thanks to that chance incident.
Back to our topic, some of you may wonder: "What you are saying is the ideal. However, we live in reality and life is not a bed of roses! Is it even real to take everything so...positively?"
Well, I pondered on this one for quite a bit, and in the process I had to admit that I often dwell a lot on negative thoughts and as a result, don't act proactively -- talk about really contrasting with the things that I've been learning and blogging about! However, if you know me, I blog about the lessons that I learn in life, and when a timely reminder or a nudge from someone stirs me up in a reflective mood and I think about how to improve, well I'll blog about it in the hopes that both me and my readers can benefit from it.
Well, life really does suck pretty often, I have to admit, and we have to be realistic with our thoughts (in the sense that we properly label something bad as something bad and not suggest otherwise), but what I'm advocating is (perhaps this may come across as pretty extreme) assuming a positive attitude instead of a negative one, because as it has been said, 'we are what we think', and dwelling on productive thoughts (what I can do to solve the problem, followed by action) instead of unproductive ones (replaying a bad experience over and over in my head), I believe, helps us to get on with life better. :)
Side note: About the images that I've been using for my blog posts, all of them are used (where permission to use the image is not restricted) under a Creative Commons licence from Flickr.. From now on, to further respect the copyrights of picture owners, I will source every image used in this blog by providing a source link.
Today's image is taken from here.
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