Don’t Overreact to a Negative Situation

Don’t Overreact to a Negative Situation

When I was teenager my father had a very nice motor car. It seemed to have so many advanced features on it. However, I do remember an incident that still brings a smile to my face today. It was when my father’s car apparently ran-out of gas and he had to call Roadside Assistance. When Roadside Assistance arrived with a gallon of gas, the person politely reminded my Dad that his car actually had a second gas tank: an emergency/reserve tank that contained a gallon of gas. All my Dad needed to have done was to click a switch inside the car and the car would have been fueled by the gas in the second tank.

He never lived that down. Like most of us, he did not step back and look at the situation calmly. He overreacted. He forgot that the car had a secondary emergency gas tank. He just assumed the worst.

How reflective of life is that?

Most of us automatically think the worst when things start to go wrong in our lives. We become preoccupied with how bad we think things are. We get things out of out of proportion and out of perspective.

In such situations, it is an unfortunate human tendency for most of us to see the bleak side of things. We become annoyed and don’t always think clearly.

Whatever the situation when life gets messy, we need to make every effort to get things into perspective. This can often be successfully achieved by making a determined effort to also see the positive things in our lives that are so often taken for granted. If we can do this successfully, such messy situations start to not feel quite so bleak and we will start to think more clearly and make more prudent decisions.