We have this idea in our head - a kind of script, really - that in various situations, our response is supposed to be to act out. It might be "when I'm under stress," or "when I'm lonely," or "when I'm triggered." But somehow, we've accepted that it's sorta-kinda OK to act out. Like it's understandable.
And then we need to fight against that assumption.
Instead, perhaps we should go through our minds in our free time; find all those messed-up scripts; and scrap them in favor of new, good ones. This is MY movie, and I think I'm going to call in the best script-writer available - yeah, that would be Hashem. I like his endings the best.
Thanks for sharing this! Very well said!
This sounds a bit like the first of Covey's Seven Habits. He writes:
We can choose to be reactive to our environment. For example, if the weather is good, we will be happy. If the weather is bad, we will be unhappy. If people treat us well, we will feel well; if they don't, we will feel bad and become defensive. We also can choose to be proactive and not let our situation determine how we will feel. Reactive behavior can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. By accepting that there is nothing we can do about our situation, we in fact become passive and do nothing.
The first habit of highly effective people is proactivity. Proactive people are driven by values that are independent of the weather or how people treat them. Gandhi said, "They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them." Our response to what happened to us affects us more than what actually happened. We can choose to use difficult situations to build our character and develop the ability to better handle such situations in the future.
Proactive people use their resourcefulness and initiative to find solutions rather than just reporting problems and waiting for other people to solve them.