M Swing – Way of Life

You ofthen will hear in the lesf help books that everything in your life is a matter of perspetive. Do not expect me to claim the same thing because I belive that that is not true. Sometimes things happen which are a priori bad or a priori good independently of the fact how and from which perspetive do you look at them.

For instance the day my father died was the worst day of my life and there is no perspective which can change that matter. Maybe loking from some other point of view you can make things slightly better: consider, if your are reliogious, that he is now in heaven and has ethernal life or something like that. But still, whereever he is, he is not with me and that makes me sad.

I am sure in life of all people there are moments which are tragic or sad and that cannot be changed.

But jet, let me tell you that: in lot of cases, the way you look at things can influence your future. Nearby everthing (with exception of things said above) can be seen in positive or negative light and it is you who can determine how to see them.

I have lot of friends who go with negative attitude throughtout the life. This is their style in life. All the time you see them there are million things they are unhappy with. That makes me funny now. But jet, there was time I had the same attitude: I had a style of sceptical intellectual who was making sarcastic jokes nearby about everything – with the time, the feelings I had became really negative. When I got more money from some good scholarship, I was sarcastic, when I had success in some conference I was sarcastic and always, always unhappy. I am sure that my unhappy impulses produced stimulis which influenced things around me and consequently lot of bad things started to happen around me. This was just terrible experience. I had times when everything was just dark – not because of my perspectie but because of the fact: lot of people around me past away, I lost lot of money and friends, failed in relationships. But now I realize that everything happened was because I wanted them to happen with me: consider, why should life (in philosophical terms) take care of you when you are sarcastic about it? Why should friends stay with you when you are sceptical about friendship and do not value it? Why should a girl stay with you when you do not respect the relationship?

First I have changed my perspective and only then things have started to become better. Because change of my perspective forced me to change my actions and reactions of the outside world changed appropriately. Even now I sometimes have problems to see everything in psoitive light and I must fight my inner self in order to stay in this positive mood. Because I was used to something else in my past and this something was part of my life and lifestyle.

Therefore I always remind myself to try and analyze everything in positive perspective. Belive me in most of the times you will find lot of good things in somethig what you first see as catastrofic fact.

So now the idea of third lesson is to concentrate yourself on positive sides in your past: take all your bad experience and analyze it once again. Look what positive can be found or which positive things can emerge out of this negative fact? How can you use that for something good?

Let me tell you another story to make it:

As I was a student I was living in shared flat with my colleagues. We had lot of “intellectual” student events where we used to play chess. As I was always winning I was considered to be a great chess player. My room mate used to tell me: “you are great player you have to play with my father”. I have to note here that his father was a Master in Chess in one of the Swiss cantons and teached chess everyday to students. O, I thought, I am great player, I can compete with him.

Once father of my room mate was visiting him in Zurich. So I met him in our flat. He offered me to play chess what we actually did. Now guess: I was crushed in several moves. Whatever I tried he had better option to attak me. I was devastated. My name as agood chess player was destroyed in several minutes. What could be good of that fact? Well, something very important was good: I have learned several openings in chess which I use even now when I play whith my friends and they are always in trouble to respond apporpriately. With this catastrofic loss I become even stronger.

So once again: you first have to change your perspective in order to change and imporve  your life.

See you!