There are many ways of inter­pret­ing things that hap­pen in our lives. From my per­spec­tive, there is no such thing as a pure coin­ci­dence, but every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son — and there are ways to lever­age on and learn from that.

Good and bad things alike, have helped me to under­stand my envi­ron­ment bet­ter and to improve the qual­i­ty of my life. It’s not that I’d be look­ing for bad things to hap­pen or that I’d be explic­it­ly happy when they occur but I have learned to accept them as some­thing that becomes a part of my life and that teach­es me something. 

The more I have learned to cope with bad things and to turn result­ing neg­a­tive ener­gy in accep­tance, or, even bet­ter, in pos­i­tive ener­gy, I’m won­der­ing about many peo­ple around me seem­ing­ly strug­gling with that. Time and again I over­hear peo­ple lament­ing about ‘huge’ prob­lems that rather sound as neg­li­gi­ble triv­ia to my ears. It seems that some people’s main prob­lem is that their prob­lems are too small.

Life Hack: Make Your­self Smaller

It does not nec­es­sar­i­ly work all the time but it works imme­di­ate­ly and uncon­di­tion­al­ly: if I accept bad things that hap­pen as a mat­ter of fact and then decide whether to only accept it, change the sit­u­a­tion or leave it, my actions become cool­er and smarter. I don’t feel stressed. Instead, I con­cen­trate on what to do and start tak­ing action imme­di­ate­ly: I don’t resist, I don’t judge and I don’t inhere. And it does­n’t take much to act in this way. The only thing I have to keep in mind: I have to remem­ber this life hack at the very begin­ning of each bad sit­u­a­tion and to start apply­ing it immediately.

A good exam­ple of a ‘huge’ prob­lem would be some traf­fic sit­u­a­tion when anoth­er dri­ver honks and flips you the bird. A typ­i­cal reflex­ive action would be to do the same or retal­i­ate in a seem­ing­ly more pow­er­ful way. Instead, remem­ber the above and try this: smile and don’t react at all. Or: excuse your­self and wave to him in an obvi­ous­ly apolo­getic way. Try not to make your­self more pow­er­ful than him but less, more humble. 

There Is No Pure Coincidence

This will result in two effects: the other per­son will calm down and you your­self expe­ri­ence a weird feel­ing of inner peace: if you make your­self less­er, or small­er, you will in fact expe­ri­ence the oppo­site feel­ing of being grown, instead. This life hack has helped me in many sit­u­a­tions that oth­er­wise could have been esca­lat­ed. If you make your­self small­er in order not to esca­late poten­tial prob­lems you learn to deal with these sit­u­a­tions in an easy and ele­gant way. That abil­i­ty def­i­nite­ly improves your over­all qual­i­ty of life.

coincidence quality of life