“If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.”

When I posted this quote on facebook, I got queries on “how to change the way we think about it?”

I have some comments to make.

The quote simply says, either change what is bothering you or change yourself so that it does not bother you.

Why did we precipitately decide that we can’t change what is bothering us?  Did we make enough effort to change things? If you refer to Mr. Hazare’s agitation, did not a change happen?

Take rules – be it college rules or government rules. Are we saying these cannot be changed, therefore we need to change our attitude towards them?

Did we really try? If we tried and failed, is it because we do not know how to change? Or are we lazy and did not make enough or right effort, or have patience? Either way, suppose we talk about corruption – are we therefore saying we can’t change corruption, so let us change our attitude towards corruption? Are we saying that we cannot change the rules, so we change our attitude towards them?

Let us assuming that we tried to change what is bothering us, be it people, things or ideas. Let us also assuming that we tried different ways, we asked around if others also have the same opinions as us, we gathered support and made an effort to change.

Then comes the second part – changing our attitude or our belief towards what we do not like. to do that, let us first examine our emotions towards what we do not like. What is really causing those emotions? is it the rules or the corruption, or is it our feeling of helplessness? Does the feeling of helplessness come because we have low self confidence, and because we remember past incidents which created such feelings?

This is a root cause analysis of our emotions, to find out the deep-rooted belief that is really the cause of the emotions.  If we do not handle this deep rooted cause of the emotions, we will be dealing with the symptoms, not the real reasons.

So maybe rules in the college remind us of the rules at home or school, which is what we wanted to avoid by joining a college far far away! Maybe these rules remind us of past incidents when we wanted to do things, and other members in a group or other powers of authority prevented us from doing what we wanted? If we do not handle our emotions with respect to those incidents, these emotions will recur.

Our current beliefs are a result of our past experiences and the inferences that we have drawn from them. To change our current beliefs, we need to change the past inferences and our memories of those past incidents.