confront your reality

It has been more than a year since the pandemic struck, and yet there’s still loads of uncertainty in the air. While things have gotten better in the US, UK, Australia and other countries with vaccination widely available, there are still countries like India, where fear, panic and uncertainty is still plaguing people’s lives. 

No matter where you live on the planet and what level of fear and uncertainty you’re experiencing at the moment, it’s best to not run away from your current reality and simply accept it for what it is. When we go through times of distress and uncertainty, it’s easy to lose patience and wish for things to get better soon. To start harboring false hopes and fake and baseless optimism creating an alternate reality in our lives. 

But we have no control over the external circumstances. And if we’re not careful, the dissonance between what we wish to be the reality and what is actually the reality, sooner or later, reaches its peak, and we start feeling hopeless, helpless and depressed. 

Don’t fall prey to your emotions. Instead, confront your reality, accept the circumstances that you’re in and work towards adapting to them. Find creative ways to manage whatever situation you’re in. Sure, there may be countless things that may be beyond your control, but you still have the power to choose how you respond to a particular crisis and how it impacts you. 

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus teaches us that there is no such thing as being the “victim.” Each person is responsible for their own good or their own evil; their own fortune or their own misfortune; their own happiness or their own misery. You can only be a victim of yourself. Suffering is self-inflicted and can be cured through the disciplining of the mind. Essentially, it is not things that upset us, but our judgments about those things. 

The people who took charge and made the best of what they had been given were also the ones who quickly accepted the new normal and adjusted their sails accordingly. The quicker you accept and confront your reality and let go of your daydreams and wishful thinking, the easier dealing with the real world will be.

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