The meanings you assign to experiences shape your decisions and life outcomes. Twin brothers faced identical trauma, their father murdering their mother, yet one thrived while the other went to prison. Both credited their different paths to the meaning they chose to give that trauma.
Having a positive outlook on life is a very beautiful thing, and having a positive outlook on life is just— it's really about the meaning that you give things, right? It's all about when you are actually going out and interacting in this beautiful experience called life that we have. Is that as you experience things, what is the meaning that you actually attach to these things? And how do you process it and understand it and filter it in a way which actually gives some meaning to you? Now, the reason I'm conflicted is that I see a lot of people bypass life by just living in this fantasy little, oh, everything's happy, everything's beautiful, everything's rainbows and unicorns and sparkly dust flying around everywhere. And they fail to see life how it actually can be at times, and they fail to get some key lessons, and they fail to actually see balance, right? And that's a really dangerous space to be making decisions from. You know, the difference in the quality of our lives is simply just based on the different decisions we make with the time and energy and resources that we have along the way. And so when we want to level up our life in any way, shape, or form, it's all about becoming a better quality decision maker. Right? And that's what, that's what success in life is all about, is just make better quality decisions. But you've got to ask yourself the frame from which you're making the decisions from. Is it just this rainbow fluffy stardust unicorn frame where everything is la-di-da all the time, and a lot of people just kind of sit and bathe in that space without seeing the duality of life, without seeing, um, the opportunities that are created, and seeing things from a place of balance, or even you're recognizing that there are actually some negative things in the world as well, and like recognizing, well, what do you want to do about those? Or how— what does that mean to you? Or how do you want to support that situation, right? And so the big thing about making decisions is always making decisions from a balanced state. But at the same time, when we're going out through life, there was this great story that I heard, right, is that, um, there was this Young set of twins, and they'd been through a horrible, horrible travesty, right? And this travesty was, was that their father— these young boys, um, you know, young, like 3 or 4 years old— their father had actually murdered their mother. And, uh, their father was sent away to prison. And so some journal— and so the boys went into some foster experiences and, uh, so, uh, and, you know, stayed together the entire time. And some journalists followed up with these boys, you know, 20, 25 years later as they were grown men. And they wanted to see after this travesty that they went through when they were younger, like, where were they sitting in their life right now? And so they went and met one son. And, you know, both boys were around 30 years old or whatever it was at this point in time. And he was married and he had a good job and he had some kids at home and he really seemed to be living A beautiful life. And the journalist asked him, he goes, tell me how you've, how you've experienced, like, after everything has happened, like, tell me how you've gotten to this point in your life right now. And the boy, now a man, turns to him and goes, look, with a father like that, how could I not be living this kind of life? How could have I not made the decisions that I made along the way to want to create this kind of life with a father like that? Okay, great. He then went and spoke to, tracked down the other son, the other twin boy. Grown up in the exact same environment, had the exact same experiences. And when he went to track this other son down, he found out that he was actually in prison. And he'd been in and out of prison for many years on different type of charges and things like that. And he went into the prison, actually interviewed this boy, now a man. And he goes, look, after everything that happened, like, why, why you are where you are right now? And he turns to the interviewer and he goes, well, with a father like that, how could I not be where I am right now? And the big moral of the story is that it wasn't about what happened, it was about the meaning that was given to what happened that made all the difference in both of these boys' lives, which by comparison, being twins and having the exact same experiences at the exact same time, the same growing up and things like that, they should've just based on that had the exact same experience, been in the same space in life, but it wasn't that. It was the meaning they gave to what happened made all the difference. And that's what positivity really is about in life, or negativity, or the space of balance, is that as we go through and experience this beautiful gift called life, how do we actually process these experiences? And what is the filters that we actually pass these through to be able to understand, well, where are we right now and what are the decisions that we are gonna make with the time that we have and the gift that we have of life and the resources that we have and the energy that we want to give in all those different ways? And sometimes having a beautiful positive outlook on life is really useful, and you can find a lot of gratitude in those moments, and, and, and it can be a really stunning thing. You find some people who are attached to the negativity of life, and all they can find, and even in the most beautiful day, the most beautiful weather, the most beautiful moment where there are so much gifts to be found in the moment, and all they can find out is what's wrong with the time, and that's a really sad place to be. But then we can find this space of balance where we can actually see the duality of it, where we're not caught up in this la-la land and we're not caught up in, in the deep dark depths of hell or whatever that is, and we can actually recognize both sides of the fence and we can see the beauty in the moment and find that peace and find that gratitude and finding all the beauty in that time. And we can also see some of the negatives in certain situations rather than just pretending they're not there, which is really just a form of bypassing. And when we can sit from that space and we can recognize both sides, we can find some beautiful meaning. We can find these beautiful moments of gratitude. We can find some beautiful learnings, which if we're sitting on one side of the fence, we may miss a whole bunch of this.
