Just Different

When I asked an early mentor
whether a decision
was a good thing
or a bad thing,
he told me
“There’s no good
and no bad.
There’s just different.”

His point was
as soon as we put
a positive or negative value on an event,
it colors our decision making.
We look for that value
to prove we’re right
and we don’t see all of the opportunities
or all of the cautions.

And there ARE opportunities
in every event,
no matter how negative.

I remember this
when I’m watching the news
(which I rarely do).
The media’s job is to snag our attention
and nothing snags our attention
like an end-of-the-world level disaster.
The bigger they make the disaster,
the more viewers they’ll attract.

But it ISN’T the end of the world
and someone, maybe you,
will benefit from this so-called ‘disaster.’

Hold back judgment on an event.
View it as rationally as possible
and look for the opportunities.