Life is an ever-lasting training program, and I have so much to learn.
For me, allowing things to go wrong is an important skill to learn, and to practice to get better at.
This morning, I woke up feeling not as rested as I thought a 7-hour sleep would provide me, and I sat by my bed, feeling annoyed.
It’s not supposed to be. I felt being cheated somehow.
When things go wrong, when things didn’t go “my way”, it often stokes a sudden rage in me, I get pissed off and before I consciously know it, my heart rate’s fastened, blood pressure rising, adrenaline pumping, my cheek heating up from all the blood rushing to my head, and I am ready to punch someone in the face.
It’s an instinct, a reflex that bypass the commander in chief - the shiny pre-frontal cortex (PFC), the logical circuits of the brain, the ruthless calculator that makes us do the right thing even when it’s the harder thing to do, the part that reins in our animal instincts.
(Man do I love the PFC - but then I realize who was generating that thought.)
It’s a faster circuit - emotion has a shortcut to the body, the jumpy fight-or-flight reflex flips on faster than PFC can come to rescue, and tell us that some jerk cutting in front of us isn’t all that life threatening, and whispering to the part that’s fully to ready punch someone “you’re gonna regret this” or ” I wouldn’t do it if I were you”.
Being able to acknowledge things do go wrong is an important skill, and to me, to accept the truth that we don’t have full control of where things go, is a form of courage.
I find it hard for me to allow things to go wrong, to allow myself to fail, but when I manage to do that, I find letting go of control and accepting the unexpected outcome empowering. I find strength and courage in acknowledging the truth: yeah things can go wrong, and a lot of time it’s not my fault, but I will take responsibility to fix it.
And then the fun begins. Because once I accept this is my problem, solving it can be fun - our brain is built to solve problems, it’s so amazingly good at it. The problem is not accepting, is not willing to face it, being annoyed at it, and burning all the energy on being annoyed and pissed off.
This probably is some form of stoicism, to stay calm when things go wrong, to resist the instinct to rage, to not give in to anger.
A side note on anger: often time I find anger related to losing control. When I’m angry I also find a sense of helplessness, of being hurt by something out of my control.
When things go wrong the big way - when tragedy strikes, the second stage of grief (after denial) is anger. But those big hits happen way less frequently, it’s usually the small things in the day to day life that get us.
It’s a constant fight, and we don’t always win the battle. Sometimes I would blame myself for being petty and getting pissed at small things, but then I saw Elon Musk on Twitter - a-ha, none of us is immune.
I need to constantly remind myself to allow things to go wrong, and actively practice at getting better it - not only to allow it, but to embrace it.
When chaos arises and things go wrong, it’s an invitation to ride the raging wave to destroy, or it can also be a perturbation to the system that reveals new opportunities, or at least, a training session for PFC muscles.
Things are gonna go wrong anyway whether we allow it or not, but we get to choose (at least after the ultra-fast emotions) how we react to it.