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I’ve had some pretty severe mental health struggles. I detailed them in my first book which hit #1 on Amazon (in its category) for a short time in the US, UK, and Australia.
It’s one of the reasons I detest most mental health advocacies - they’re so overdone that the very term ‘mental health’ no longer cuts through the noise. That, and the fact that most people seem to confuse being bullied once or being sad once for ‘being depressed’.
All that aside, I received some tragic news in the last 24 hours about a private client I have been doing some work with. She had been in a horrific car crash, requiring her to be air-lifted to a nearby hospital.
She was 16.
Thankfully her vitals are stable for the moment, and all we can do is send good wishes and prayers her way.
But it reminded me of a conversation I’d had with another one of my private clients earlier on in the week:
Does everything really happen for a reason?
Speaking honestly, I will tell you I’m not sure. I think it’s one of life’s toughest questions, up there with “are humans inherently good or evil?”, but it did remind me of the most important power us humans have:
We get to decide what events mean.
Lost a pageant? You get to decide what that means.
Lost a job? You get to decide what that means.
Got dumped? You get to decide what that means.
I know that might not seem like much, but think about it for just a second.
We don’t experience events. We experience the meaning we make up for those events.
Ever noticed that two people can go to the exact same party and have radically different experiences? One thought it was the best party of her life, the other thinks it was a complete waste of time and swears to never go to another party like that again.
Who was right? Both of them.
Because they weren’t responding to the objective reality of the party. They were responding to the meaning they’d made up about the party in their heads.
And here’s the kicker. That power to decide what events mean?
It’s just about the only true power you and I have in this world. The only thing we can truly control.
We can’t control events. But we can control the meaning we make up for those events.
Make sure you’re using that power - for good.
Adrian.
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