One day cannot dictate the whole course of your life. Even if you feel it is the worst day of your entire existence, it is a small blip in the grand scheme of things.
What happened has happened – and it is over and done with. But that is all infinitesimal compared to the billions of choices and paths that lay in our future.
Real, sustainable growth is never sudden and rapid. Instead, it is growth that happens incrementally over long periods of time.
It is the small things we do on a daily basis that build who we become in the future, and the impact we leave on the world long after we’ve passed away.
Our minds are built to focus on significant events in our lives. When something makes us really sad or deeply disturbs us, our mind ruminates over it to find a solution or a way to cope.
Rumination is when we think about an event in our lives over and over again. Some psychologists believe it can aid in problem-solving, but when rumination goes haywire it can bring us into a state of depression. That’s because we are constantly thinking about something that we no longer have any control over. Thus, we feel powerless and hopeless.
We can overcome this negative cycle by changing our perspective.
When I get stuck in these narrow and negative patterns of thought (being fixated on a single event), I like to “zoom out” and see the bigger picture of my life. This reminds me that no single day can ever define me and my future.
Each day we make hundreds of choices. And each of these choices has a small influence on the direction of our lives. And it is in these individual choices that we have real power and freedom over what our lives become.
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