How I respond to bad situations
Setbacks and bad luck are essentially unavoidable in life. I would even argue that such experiences are necessary because learning from them makes us stronger and better prepared for future events.
I’ve found that a logical approach has helped me to respond to bad situations in healthier ways. In any given scenario, there are five possible responses:
- Try to make the situation better
- Avoid or run away from the situation
- Do nothing, and accept the situation
- Do nothing, and complain or feel bad about the situation
- Make the situation worse
With this collectively exhaustive list before me, it’s clear that I should never intentionally choose option 4 or option 5. In practice, however, I've found that it takes extraordinary effort to follow through with this logical conclusion.
We’re naturally hard-wired to react badly when random bad things happen to us. Perhaps the most vivid personal example I can give is from my poker playing days, when "bad beats" were nearly always my most memorable hands. For those who do not play poker, let me explain with the following scenario. Imagine that you waited 3-4 hours for an opportunity to wager $1,000 with someone else on a game where you're a 9-to-1 favorite. However, disaster strikes when they hit their 10% to win, and you end up losing your money to someone foolish enough to agree to such a wager with you. Faced with this "bad beat", the average response is a mixture of disbelief, anger, and self-pity, often accompanied by some ill-considered actions. In poker parlance, we call this "going on tilt".
Analogies abound in our daily lives. An inconsiderate driver cuts in front of us on the highway; in a fit of road rage, we curse and decide to deliver some payback, ranging from annoyances such as flashing our headlights repeatedly to reckless acts such as tailgating the offending driver until they back down by changing lanes. A server gets our dinner order wrong, and we decide to make a scene. We’re passed over for a promotion at work, and we complain about our unfair treatment to anyone who would listen. And so on.
Logically, I know that such reactions serve no positive purpose, and I have told myself this every time I reflect after having such a reaction. Therefore, over the years, I've gotten much better with choosing options 2 and 3 instead of options 4 and 5 when faced with bad situations. I believe my conscious life choices have made this easier. For example, my profession allows me to decide who I work with (most of the time), making it easier for me to avoid negative people, and my commitment to caring less about what most people think of me has helped me to remain calm or at least regain my composure quickly when faced with stress-inducing events.
The one area I think I need to improve on significantly is option 1 - making bad situations better. I'm quite bad at actually resolving problems, perhaps because the only times I choose to attempt this are when they're very bad situations that involve either a person or an idea I care deeply about. Often, it involves me wanting to change that other person, which I know is extremely difficult because people don't like being told to change. The unhappy result is that an attempt to make things better may actually make them worse.
The classic example is an argument with a family member. In my experience, these are stressful and very difficult to navigate because we simultaneously care about them and want them to change them in some way. As a new father, but also someone who habitually sidesteps negativity, I'm a bit scared these days because there will undoubtedly be times when I cannot simply avoid (or accept) my daughter's problems. Like it or not, I'm faced with the prospect of eventually needing to guide her despite her objections.
I'm still learning, but I think what I've discovered so far about facing bad situations is worth sharing. The first step is to consciously realize that problem avoidance or acceptance are better responses than complaining or making the problem worse, while the second step is to understand that there are some situations we cannot run from. The final step, a framework for choosing and effectively handling the situations I should resolve, is something I'm still searching diligently for.