Just imagine what if a person should lose his inspiration and encouragement to live up to a brighter life? I’ve seen so many pieces of negative remarks people wrote on the head part of their QQ spaces. After entering universities, I even began to wonder whether university is a real place, as expected, for us to enjoy the air of freedom, vigor of young adolescents and the greatest bliss.
It should be and it’s bound to be and so is our whole life. However, in most cases where a person is always complaining about the world, the pleasure and some sort of feeling of satisfaction in achievements one has gained is progressively minimized by the seemingly overwhelming negativism in a person’s mind. The more shadow and darkness one fixes his or her attention on, the unhappier he or she will be. I call this phenomenon ‘lack of self-affirmation’. It’s caused probably by lots of complicated reasons and factors. The certain background of a person determines most, which is my personal opinion. Why do I particularly emphasize this factor? The answer is simple but really thought-provoking.
Everybody has a completely different life background which enables one to get knowledge and experience. One of the most indispensable part of the things it offers is the outlook toward the world. This is the key element that influences a person to go along the life course in acertain way, positive or negative, which is, to some extent, a good thing for a person who possesses a background containing more success than failure, and a bad thing for a person with a background linked most to painful and sad memories.
Take for a detailed instance, a person who is always getting high marks in math will create a conviction in his mind that he’s bound to succeed in the following math exams. He regards math as a piece of cake in his hands, which develops a thought within him that he excels in arithmetic and numbers, thus promoting his further potential and a benign circle just appears. Conversely, if a person always fails in counting, calculating and analyzing problems related to math, he will lose confidence in this field. He’s afraid of it because his background in learning math is a nightmare. So when it comes to things connected with math, he will be extremely rejected and if he’s a high school student, it’ll be highly possible for him to ruin his grades in math on condition that nothing good turns up in this subject before the National College Entrance Examination. This is called a vicious circle. The same principle seems true for the life course .
When one’s background is cluttered with anguish and failure, it’s certain that he or she will be doubtful about the future, every coming good thing can be minimized and bad thing maximized. Complaining about the world and stronger feeling of lacking self-confidence and even the loss of hope toward life will exist and grow at an incredible pace. If we get numb to this depressing condition, it’ll be dangerous for us because the extinction of our positive minds is getting closer and it can ruin our life.
However, it can’t be denied that the ‘negative background’ can be overcome for we have encountered so many examples such as Einstein, whose childhood was filled with his teacher’s mockery of his intelligence; such as Obama, whose background in his early years was a tangle of the uncertainty and sorrow about his race and about his future life.
Endless instances have proved background just important but not all in one’s life. It can influence you in a substantial level only when you locate your value completely according to the past background. You do not live in the past. Yes, it right that tomorrow is uncertain, but why can’t we realize a little that the word ‘uncertainty’ includes two deep meanings—not all ‘negative’, but also ‘positive’. You don’t need to expect success all the time but expect failure if you are a negative-background person. Just try the new things while holding an outlook that ‘failure is common for me, but someday in the future a surprise like success may come to me if I’m fortunate.’ Thus, success is not what you’re desperate for, but merely a big surprise for you and you can still do without it. I think the saying ‘bigger hope, bigger disappointment’ is not necessarily incorrect. Don’t expect the best but the worst and do your utmost! Then the ‘surprises’ in your life are going to meet you unexpectedly, one by one. The past negative background can only sigh because that devil can’t catch and control your future.
The background lives in the past while you live in the present and the future. You are right the master of your life. Don’t always complain this or that, be positive and active, then it’s not positive minds that extinct, but the ‘negative background’ and your negative minds that do……
To Be Continued… 2011.5.28