Have you ever had those moments in life where you ran into someone who was just having a bad day?

You know, the guy who laid on his horn behind you at the stop sign or the woman who gave you a rude remark because she felt forced to walk around you in the grocery store aisle?

And then, even though you’re back home and likely to never see that person again, you happen to replay that sour moment over and over again in your mind?

It happens to the best of us.

It’s kind of a natural thing really. Your brain interprets that event as a type of fight-or-flight and replays that memory in order to find solutions and different outcomes for you to be better prepared for next time.

That, and it also makes you feel productive because you go through all these scenarios where you said this or did that. It makes you feel better.

But that’s what you think.

Rumination is one of the core principles to stress and anxiety. And the more you overthink one particular scenario, the deeper you fall into the ‘thought loop’ and the harder it is to get out.

I could go on and on about how mentally taxing the thought loop is and how to get out of it, but that’s for another day—or a book. For now, the best thing you can do in order to avoid it is to dismiss it all-together.

With that, as usual, I have a story.

There was once a traveling monk who was insulted by a warrior who hated his calming presence—I guess you could say he was jealous?

The warrior was yelling out words of anger and mockery expecting him to react and break his calm aura. But the monk remained still, his expression showing no sign of reaction.

Frustrated, the warrior said, “How can you just stand there and say nothing? Do my words mean nothing to you?”

The monk smiled gently and said, “If someone hands you a letter, but you refuse to open it, to whom does the letter belong to?”

The warrior stood there confused and said, “Well… I suppose it still belongs to the sender.”

The monk nodded. “So too with your words. I do not have to accept them, just as I do not have to accept unnecessary words. Anxiety is often an unopened letter—it is yours only if you choose to claim it.”

I don’t know about you, but that’s a pretty good way to look at life.

Whenever someone ticks you off or you run into someone having a bad day, just look at it like it’s a letter being sent to you. Are you going to open it? Or are you going to toss it in the trash and move on with your life?

It’s up to you whether you’ll accept the words being thrown at you. As Les Brown says, “Don’t let someone else’s opinion of you become your reality.”

Until next time,
Isaiah Taylor

Dive Deeper

What I’m Currently Reading - Today I’ll be finishing The Wager by David Grann. A true-story on the shipwreck of the British Warship The Wager and the mutiny and murder that followed.

Quote Of The Week - “Some of the best days of our lives haven’t even happened yet.” — Anne Frank