Approaching Gains and Losses with a Calm Mind (2)
Gains and losses are events that will continuously occur throughout our lives, with the only difference being how much of each we experience.
Gains and losses, as the words imply, refer to what you gain and what you lose. Every time they occur, it's like a test—testing how you view what you have gained and lost and testing the attitude you will take towards them. To pass these tests, approaching gains and losses with a calm mind is the most important thing we should do and the attitude we should maintain.
Approaching gains and losses with a calm mind is not only a form of wisdom but also an attitude towards life that we should uphold. In life, what we care about most is what we lose, because losing something means it no longer belongs to us, and we've lost the opportunity to have it.
Why Should We Learn to Approach Gains and Losses with a Calm Mind?
Gains: There was a time when I felt the world was unfair. In every competition or situation, I always failed to get what I wanted, even when I gave my all. I complained about everything, repeatedly questioning in my heart, "Why am I always the one who doesn't get it?" I felt angry, and every time I failed to gain something, it deepened my sense of injustice and chipped away at my confidence in the future and in myself. My thoughts at that moment were, "So what if I try hard? So what if I put in the effort? In the end, the one who gets it won't be me. I will never be chosen."
Losses: Losing people, opportunities, time—no matter what is lost, once it's gone, it will never come back.
In the past, I would always complain about why I lost these things, why I didn't hold on to them, why I let them slip away so easily. Why...?
Whenever I lost something, my first reaction was regret and anxiety. These inner reactions truly made me feel uneasy and lingered in my mind. I blamed myself for not holding on to what I had lost, blamed myself for not doing something before it was gone.
That was the old me. Whenever I lost something, I would only blame myself, leading to endless anxiety, which, like when I failed to gain something, caused my confidence to plummet. I began to feel that I couldn’t do anything right.
But then I changed. I had been dwelling on the disappointment and anxiety brought by gains and losses for so long that I grew tired of it. Eventually, I shifted my mindset. Because of this change, I not only became more confident but also saw my life gradually improve, as this new way of thinking gave me the motivation to take action.
Whether it’s the impact of gains or losses, what I want to say is that you need to learn to take it all in stride. Yes, I used to complain about the world’s unfairness, but so what? Since I couldn’t change this unfairness, I chose to accept it. For me, approaching gains and losses with a calm mind means accepting their occurrence.
Accepting Gains and Losses, In the process of accepting, you’ll realize that what has happened has already happened, and not everything will go according to our wishes. All we can do is strive for the future after something has occurred. We can't change what has already happened, but we can try to do something to change what hasn’t happened yet. Whether we gain or lose, we must believe that if we take action, it will surely influence the future outcomes, whether in terms of gains or losses.
There’s something called the "butterfly effect." Using our future as an example, if we do something now for the future, the future can easily be influenced by what we’ve done and lead to the outcomes we desire. Although this effect isn't guaranteed to happen 100%, it’s still better than doing nothing.
In other words, if we can’t influence the gains and losses of the present, then we should aim to influence the gains and losses of the future. We can set our sights on what we want to gain and what we don’t want to lose, and take action based on that. Perhaps these efforts will be in vain, but believe in this: the probability of influencing the outcome is 50% after taking action, but if you do nothing, the probability will always be 0%.
Last Thoughts
What I want to say is that you need to learn to take gains and losses lightly, but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put in the effort. It means that after you’ve tried your best and seized every opportunity, you should learn to take the results lightly because there will inevitably be negative outcomes. These negative outcomes require us to take them lightly, so they don’t affect our next steps.
Accept the gains and losses that have already occurred. What we can do is take action for the future, rather than letting the temporary gains and losses of the present create negative emotions that hinder our progress on life’s Journe.
y.
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