SNU

I’ve always told myself time and time again that it is not others that fail us the most but it is our own expectations. And to stop feeling like a victim every time we are faced with disappointments. It’s a really bad habit and most of us do it without even us realizing. Denial is the most widespread plague within our society nowadays. What is to become of us when we can’t even be truthful to ourselves.

Take a look at an apple tree. There might be up to five hundred apples on a tree but did you know that each apple has only ten seeds? [Well I’m assuming that it is a normal, healthy ‘Non Northern Spy’ apple. An apple is capable of producing up to 10 seeds per apple i.e. 2 seeds for each carpel. I just found out about that fact today myself.]

Anyway, try multiplying 500 apples with 10 seeds, HELL!!! That’s way loads of seeds. Now I’m wondering, “Why would you need so many seeds just to grow just a few more apple trees?” That’s like for each apple core I plant, I’m gonna get 10 apple trees. I’m gonna run out of space to plant apple trees at my house.

Well, nature has its own tale to tell us here. You see, not all seeds grow. In life, most seeds never grow. But eventually out of many seeds, some WILL grow. You just don’t know which one. So, if you really want to make something happen, you better try more than once. Coz you’ll never know which attempt will succeed.

You’ll attend twenty interviews just to land you with that one job you want.

You’ll interview forty people to find one good candidate to fill up the vacant post you have.

You’ll talk to fifty people to sell one house, one car, one vacuum cleaner, one insurance policy.

And you might meet a hundred acquaintances just to find that one special friend.

When we understand this “Law of Seed”, we just might be able to avoid from falling into or crawl out of the sinkhole that we bury ourselves in every time we get disappointed. We’ll stop feeling like victims. We won’t get so disappointed to the point being depressed.

Laws of nature are not things to be taken personally. Don’t get bloody uptight about it, it happens to almost everybody. So don’t take offense of it. We just need to understand them - and work with and around them. Learn to deal with things that happens to us.

Successful people fail more often before they succeed. But they plant more seeds everytime they fall to ground. That’s how they rise up again and again until success is theirs. When things are beyond your control, here’s something that you must NOT DO so as to be happy :

You must not decide how you think the world SHOULD be.

You must not make rules for how everyone SHOULD behave.

The moment the word ’should’ comes to your mind, you’re indirectly without realising it, putting an expectation on it. How many times have you tell yourself :

Friends SHOULD return favours.

People SHOULD appreciate you.

Planes SHOULD arrive on time.

Everyone SHOULD be honest.

Your best friend SHOULD remember your birthday.

Many times, such thoughts can bring you spiraling down into more unhappiness and even depression. These expectations may sound reasonable and harmless. But often, all the above mentioned things won’t happen! So you’ll end up being frustrated and disappointed. The irony is that you KNEW that there is a big possibility of it all not happening but YET, you still bet your bottom dollar on the most odd probability. We are such King of Wishful Thinking, aren’t we all?

Well, there’s a better strategy.

Demand less and instead, have preferences.

For things that are beyond your control, tell yourself :

“I would prefer “A”, but if “B” happens, it’s ok too”.

This way, you prefer people to be polite but when they are rude, it doesn’t ruin your day. You prefer sunshine but if it rains, you can still go out of the house too [with an umbrella of course].

To be come happier, we either need to Change The World or Change The Way We Think. And trust me, it is way, way much easier to change our thinking that changing the entire world. I know changing mindsets ain’t exactly easy as A,B,C but the more we try, who knows which attempt is gonna succeed. We didn’t just recite A,B,C with a flick of a finger. God knows how many times our daddies and mummies coaches us with A,B,C before we finally got the hang of it. Even then, some of us still gets it all jumbled up.haha

It is not what happens to you that determine your happiness but rather, how you think about that happens to you!





[Btw, this entry does not by any way imply that I love apples]