It’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling cursed. “Things just never go the right way for me.” As Richard Pervo once wrote, “It is a sad realization of adulthood that most of our problems are caused by our own behavior.” Exactly. We all fall in to the trap of thinking we’re cursed, or at least that there is some mysterious, unknowable and unchangeable aspect of who we are that causes us to chronically fail in this or that area of our lives. I fall into this trap periodically, and I’ve been working on keeping myself out of it by always finding looking for a solution instead of wringing my hands in frustration over the problem in front of me. I’ll give you an example: At work I once told by my boss that I didn’t do very much work. My boss doesn’t get a chance to observe me very often, but her impression was totally off the mark. In response I began to add extra chores to my daily routine. These chores are not difficult or time consuming, but the difference in perception that was achieved made it completely worth it. This is an example of what I mean: I could have told my boss she was wrong. I could have insisted I was right. Instead, I fixed the perception problem I was having and moved on.
Scientists approach every problem they face with the attitude that there must be a comprehensible explanation. They adopt this attitude because that’s part of what it means to do science; saying “God did it” or “it can never be explained” only means that you gave up on a scientific explanation. Likewise, approaching life with the methodology “Every problem has a solution” works ten times better than “Woe is me.”
Dump the Magick Mentality and Evolve.
