Not To You, But For You
Here’s one of the most limiting thoughts you can have throughout a day: “Why did this happen to me?” When we have this thought and ask the question this way, we get in the habit of looking at life and our workdays from a passive perspective.
In this episode I give you a few common situations where you might be asking this limiting question, and I offer you a new question that will help you flip this thought and approach each day as an active participant.
Episode Transcription
Intro:
Here’s one of the most limiting thoughts you can have during a day: Why did this happen to me? When we have this thought and when we ask the question this way - “Why did this happen to me” - we get in the habit of looking at life and our workdays from a passive perspective.
So in this episode I want to give you some situations where you might be asking this limiting question, and I want to offer you a new question that will help you flip this thought and approach each day as an active participant instead. Here we go.
Main:
I want to introduce you to what I think is one of the most limiting thoughts that each of us is consciously and subconsciously having each and every day, and here’s the thought:
Why did this happen to me?
I think if we pay close attention to how we’re thinking throughout the day, we notice that this thought or some variation of this thought pops into our minds all day long in response to what we perceive in the moment to be a negative situation, or in response to something that interferes with the well laid out plans we had for that day.
I personally catch myself having this kind of thought quite often, but to give you some more context for what I mean let me give you a few examples of specific situations that commonly pop up where I think this plays out for many of us:
Example 1 is when someone says no to us or something doesn’t go our way. So a potential client says no or an existing client or a supervisor or colleague says they don’t like our work or they disagree with us, or we don’t get an opportunity that we wanted badly. When someone says no to us or that they didn’t like our work, it’s easy for us to take that personally and internalize what just happened - particularly if it’s something that we worked hard on or cared about or anticipated that it would be received with praise or acceptance.
Example 2 is when we make a mistake. When we make a mistake we tend to immediately start to beat up on ourselves and say “how could I have done that?” That was such a stupid thing to do,” or “how could that have happened”, and in doing that we question why we didn’t do something differently.
And then example three is when something interrupts our plans for the day. When we start the day and think about what we have to do that day, we immediately set baseline expectations in our mind for how things are going to go that day. And then when something unexpected happens during the day that we hadn’t planned for, we get frustrated and upset that this thing impacted our day.
And all of these thoughts originate from a place of choosing to look at each of these situations through the lens of “Why did this happen to me.”
But here’s one of the major problems with that viewpoint. When we ask the question that way - why did this happen to me - we get in the habit of looking at life and our workdays from a passive perspective. It’s the perspective of someone who is constantly having things happen to them. It makes it feel like the outside world has it in for us, it’s conspiring against us, there’s something outside of us that’s making this thing happen.
And this kind of thinking robs us of our power and our confidence and our ability to move through our day from an active perspective as opposed to a passive one.
And our minds react in this way because we want to know the reason why things happen to us so that we can protect ourselves. In other words if we come across a situation where it feels like we’ve encountered something outside of us that has the potential to cause us harm - like negative feedback or making a mistake for example - our brain kicks into survival mode and starts asking the question why so that it can protect us in that moment and also make a note of the root cause so that it can protect us in the future.
So the origin of thought “Why did this happen to me” really comes from a place of feeling like we need to protect ourselves, and when we feel like we need to protect ourselves we automatically look at EVERY situation we encounter with suspicion so that we can do a better job of protecting ourselves the next time it comes up.
So. How do we address this?
Here’s what I want you to do: I want you to flip that thought.
Instead of asking why did this happen to me, I want you to ask “How did this happen for me?”
And when we ask the question this way, it allows us to move from a place of passiveness to being an active participant in what happens next. We’re essentially flipping from being someone who has things that are happening to them all day, to someone who is taking every single thing that happens and using it as a way to move forward.
In other words, we can take the things that we used to think happened to us and we can realize that we always have a choice to view everything that happens as an opportunity to outgrow the old state of mind that caused us to think that way in the first place, and we can enter into a new state of mind that allows us to grow past that pattern of negative thinking.
So here’s the ultimate value of learning how to do this: When you choose to think about things from the perspective of “how did this happen for me”, then you no longer have to subject yourself to the repetitive disappointment, anxiousness, anger, or frustration that arises when a particular situation presents itself.
So I want to pause here for a second and I want you to picture with as much specificity as possible, a recurring situation in your day where, when this particular situation happens, it always puts you in the same scared, anxious, or frustrated state of mind. So bring to mind a recurring situation where no matter how good of a day you’re having, or how good a mood you’re in, if this situation pops up it always triggers you to feel like something is happening to you?
So keep this top of mind for a minute, and as you’re thinking about it, I want you to consider how great it would be to stop feeling that way every time this thing happens to you?
And to be clear, It’s happening to you because you’re viewing it as happening to you, and what I want you to do is flip that and empower yourself by asking “How could this situation be happening for me instead.”
So, for example, let’s say that a potential client says no, or someone says they didn’t like the work you did, instead of taking it personally and viewing it as something that person did to you, what you can do is step into the role of an active participant and try to figure out how you use what happened for you and to your benefit.
So if you make a mistake, instead of immediately beating up on yourself, you step into the role of an active participant and ask what did I learn.
And when something interrupts your plans for the day, instead of getting caught up in how what’s happened didn’t align with your expectations, you start to move away from feeling like something happened to you and you step into the role of being an active participant by taking that new information and using it to reshape and reset your expectations.
And when you practice stepping into the role of being an active participant, it allows you to quickly shed your old expectations of what you wanted to happen because they no longer apply, and once you shed your old expectations then you can create a brand new plan based on the new information you’ve received.
And I really want you to try this for yourself, because what I think you’ll notice is that if you practice this enough, you start to become the kind of person who no matter what situation you encounter, you always know that it’s going to be ok because you’ve decided and you believe that you always get to play a role in what happens next. If you practice this enough, you realize that you are no longer powerless over any situation that you encounter.
It’s a life-changing realization to have and I want each of you to experience it.
So here’s what I want you to do for yourself this week, and there’s three simple steps:
First, I want you to try to catch yourself one time each day where you’re thinking about something from the perspective of “why did this happen to me.”
Second, When you catch yourself having that thought, I want you to flip it to “how did this happen for me” and make a choice to be an active participant in what happens next.
And Third, When I do this exercise I find it helpful to write down right then and there, one way that I can become an active participant in what happens next. In other words, what steps can I take to move from being passive to active with this situation.
So to wrap this up:
If you become someone who always looks at things as happening for you, then there’s always a takeaway. Instead of bathing in self-misery and loathing all day feeling like things are happening to you, you get to have opportunities all day long that help you move forward.
Now the answer to the question “how is this happening for me” might not present itself right away, or it might not be an answer you like. But the answers to this question are the answers that help us the most. It’s called GROWTH. And Growth can be hard, but that’s what it’s all about.
So if you want to shift your focus from being passive to active during your workday, then start by changing the way that you ask that question.
Things don’t happen to you, they happen for you.
Go have a great workday.