Interpretation vs Yourself
Have you ever get criticized till find yourself dejected?
That thing could be even worse when you’re in a pressured situation or the situation when you feel exhausted, physically — or even mentally.
These days I run in a fast pace. Tight schedule, a bunch of deadlines. With my energy that remains, I have to deal with criticism (to my work) that some of them — hit me hard.
I was pissed out, and often blame myself.
“I’m not good enough for this”
“I can’t lead better”
“Maybe someone should change my position, perhaps everything gonna be better”
I met a good book, named Filosofi Teras (Stoicism). I remember that Stoicism taught us about how our interpretation gave bigger impact than the problem itself to our self. They said that a problem is causes by 90% our interpretation and 10% problem itself.
Most of us trapped in own interpretation. For example, someone find out that his honey bunny sweety cheating on him. After that, he feels like he is useless, blame himself, then he did a kind of self-harm.
The problem that he hurts himself causes by his interpretation. He trapped in an assumption of his own. He titled himself as a useless man. Stoicism taught us to give a border between the fact and the assumption. So, in this case, the cheating thing is fact. But the useless feeling is up to his interpretation, which actually could be controlled.
We have to differentiate between the fact and the assumption / interpretation. It’s important to allocate our energy more to the 10% part, rather than to the 90% one. With this Stoicism belief, we could sort out the things in our mind and just keep it on the boundary.
Fact is actually happened. Interpretation is dependent.
Frankly speaking, it was not that easy to implement as a mindset, especially for me as a melancholy who feel everything so easy and deeply. I still practice it more and more, everyday.
Wish it could help you too.
When we react to something, our feeling may comes first. But always remember that you have control to make it comes second.
