What is more important: to influence the situation or change your attitude towards it?

The Western mentality pushes us to try to control the situation, the East sees wisdom in changing the attitude towards the world. But is it possible to balance these two approaches?

WHY IS ONE IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT THE OTHER?

A person is unable to make the simplest changes in his lifestyle without changing his attitude towards them. For example, training. Until you see joy in it, it will never take a permanent place in your daily routine, it will not become a part of your life.

And vice versa. You cannot change your attitude to the situation without influencing the situation itself. A striking example is the relationship between people. Change your attitude towards a person and you will see how the relationship itself will change.

WHERE DOES MANAGEMENT BEGIN?

A person always comes to the problem of management (self-government) when he stumbles again about some life situation. So far, everything is going smoothly with us - we do not strive to manage something and influence something. But then trouble comes, and it prompts us to think.

In the course of reflection, we can draw two consistent conclusions:

1. It happened because I made a mistake.
2. It happened because someone made a mistake.

In any unpleasant situation, the guilt is shared by all its participants, because the actions of each of them contributed. Therefore, both conclusions will be correct to a certain extent.

However, if we first of all see our mistake in what happened, then we try to influence the situation (prevent this from happening in the future) by changing ourselves. When we see the guilt of another person, we try to influence the situation, prompting him to change.

But, as life experience shows, people are in no hurry to change after hearing our calls. And then we understand: we cannot force a person to change, because the nature of our relationship with him does not allow us to do so. And, if we are sufficiently motivated in solving the problem, we can set ourselves a new task: to change our relationship with the person in order to influence his attitude to the problem. And here it turns out that for this we will again have to appeal to the inner work on ourselves, because our relationship with someone else is a consequence of our relationship to this person.

WHY IS INNER WORK NOT WHAT YOU THINK?

Most people perceive inner work as a kind of seclusion and isolation from the outside world. Like, I'm working on myself, and you don't bother me, and then, when I have done all the work, I will shine in all its glory and everything will go smoothly for me. This will not work, because it does not correspond to the natural laws of evolution.

Internally, a person can change only under the influence of new experience, which is a consequence of contact with the outside world. To change internally, we must all the time, albeit a little, but go outside our comfort zone. This requires some effort and is accompanied by internal tension, but, on the other hand, it changes ourselves.

Therefore, if you cannot force yourself to go to training, go anyway, but CHANGE THE TRAINING CONDITIONS so that it gives you some joy. And then you will get a new experience - the experience of joy from the training process, which was previously inaccessible to you. And this experience will change your attitude towards physical effort, and after that your lifestyle will change as well.

If you fail to build a satisfying relationship with someone, then either break that relationship or try to change it by changing your attitude towards the person. But for this you have to contact with him, and not meditate on his photograph. To contact means to communicate, learn to go towards each other, show flexibility or perseverance but in any case cultivate patience and benevolence.

So it turns out that the paths of internal and external transformations are closely intertwined and are impossible one without the other. A few more tricks on how to change your attitude towards anything in my other article.