Turn Unpleasant Experiences Into Valuable Learnings
Have you ever thought of how the people who come into our life, by purpose or by chance, sometimes put an inerasable impact or influence on us? The impact can be positive or negative, deliberate or unplanned and maybe the person himself might be ignorant of the extent of the impact he has made on us or what lesson he has taught us. Many factors play a vital role in shaping our personality but through this article, I want to emphasize mainly how people, with whom we come across in life, influence our thinking and shape our personality.
Impact people have on our life
Our family, our friends, our neighbours, our schoolmates, our colleagues are the people whom we are bound to interact with on an everyday basis and they impact us to a great extent. In fact, we might associate and reflect the ideologies and behaviours of these people to a great extent. There is another set of people whom we meet, casually and occasionally such as service providers like our doctor, our helpers, a co commuter, people on the road, someone we met at the party, or someone whom we have never met but seen on TV or read about in a book, etc. Even these people can influence our thinking to a great extent. The mark that they put on us may be constructive, affirmative, or maybe even adverse or pessimistic. All these interactions, do play a role in our evolution and refinement as we progress in life. We might want to become like them or we may want to avoid being categorized as someone who is like them.
Positive influences in our life
We come across people whom we like to call our mentors, teachers, preachers, influencers, or our inspiration. Generally, our parents, friends, teachers, leaders, world-famous personalities and successful people are the ones who fall in the positive impact category. We take motivation from them to inspire us and show us the light in the right direction. Whenever we feel dejected, disheartened, frustrated or low, we should remember all the hardships they had to face to try again and rise only to become stronger and undefeatable.
My mother, an accomplished doctor, who hailed from a remote village in Northern India, became the first lady to become a doctor from that village despite limited exposure, amenities and hardships that came her way. My father, also a super-specialist doctor, is a devoted doctor for whom the value of human life is much more than money. I have seen him operating his patients for free if they cannot afford the charges and in return, he gets all the blessings and respect from them. My parents inspire me to stay focused, determined and persistent in my endeavours and to value other people. My sister, who pursued her dream of studying and working in USA, has taught me to face and fight my own battles and make a mark for myself in this world. My husband, who is there with me through every high and low of my life, has been the major driving force for me to create my website and start writing. My kids, who look at their parents to be their role models inspire me to act in a way I would like them to act. My friends who, never left me alone and were there to help me. These are the people who are my lifeline and have greatly influenced my thinking and I believe, such is the case with the majority of the people.
Our family, friends and colleagues are not the only ones who can put a positive impact on us. Positive vibes can come from the people from whom it is least expected. Instances of people who provide selfless support and help to the needy are abundant around us. They too inspire us to be more humane and humble in life.
People who arouse negativity in us
There are an equal number of people, if not more, who bring negativity, hatred, resentment and sorrow in our lives, but remember, it is necessary for us to come in contact with such people who make our lives difficult. Negative influences that have the power of leaving an adverse mark on our personality, generally come from the people whom we tried to trust and believe in, but they tried to use our dependability on them to their advantage. These people are the ones who make us value and respect the people who help and lift us at all times even more. We come across the negative influencers at all stages of our life and the hardships they give us are no doubt painful but at the same time, these negative experiences make us grow, evolve, and differentiate right from wrong, acceptable from unacceptable, and likable from unlikeable.
I have had people in my life who thought that they could behave and say anything to me just because I was in a vulnerable position, who were themselves suffering in life and could not see others lead a happy life, people who could not achieve anything in life and threw their burden of resentment on others. I would not shy away from saying that these negative influencers did haze my vision and thinking with hatred, animosity, and finally depression, for some time. My life was in turmoil, full of commotion and I lost my sense of direction in life and most of all, I lost faith in myself. But then the people who have always believed in me, my family and friends, helped me regain my confidence and face the hardships thrown upon me. I realized that the power of steering my life’s ship is in my hands and these people are just like momentary storms and high tides that will come but will eventually, fade away.
How to turn negativity in our life into something positive
The experiences that I had in my life, good and bad, have made me realize what I, and each one of us, can do in our life to turn negativity to our advantage.
1.Never lose focus
To be happy and content in our life, we need to stay focused and undeterred in life and not let negative influences shatter our confidence. We must always trust and respect ourselves.
2.Seek inspiration from the positive influences in our life
If ever, we feel weak and need the strength to pull our life back on track, think of all the people whom we consider our role models, to supply us with the spark to ignite and charge us up to conquer the world.
3.Let our actions and achievements show what we are made of
We need to keep moving ahead in life and leave all the bad influences behind and achieve what we aspire to. That is the only way to teach a lesson to those people who try to take advantage of us. It is a way to convey to them that had they put some effort in thinking about their life and not in making others’ life miserable, they too could reach a point where they could have achieved something more meaningful in life.
4. Become a positive influence in other peoples’ lives
Once we overcome the negative forces that try to pull us down and achieve all that we want to, we might provide inspiration and direction to the people who tried to throw us down, and help them achieve what would give them happiness and contentment in life.
Life puts us in touch with people of all kinds. Some of them love us, help us, guide us, and inspire us and some of them use us, hurt us and deceive us. But each one of them has a role in giving us some kind of a life lesson that would help us become stronger and more cautious. But the choice is ours, whether we let the people who bring negativity in our life, pull us down with them and make us one of them or, we show those people how to do good and live a peaceful and content life.
Aditi Mahajan
Content writer, Poetess & Blogger
