How to get value from the feeling of helplessness.In this chapter of “The 88 Rungs of Happy People” I show you that frustration can be a motivating element.
When I was working as an interpreter (simultaneous translator), I had a colleague who told me about a practice that she used and that captivated me. Since the congresses at which we interpreted only took place occasionally, our working days were short. As we all wanted to work as many days as possible, what this colleague did each day she had work was to thank him by sharing a part of his money with the person who was most in need of receiving it throughout the day.. And so, every day that I worked, without exception, yes or yes, I gave a donation to someone as a thank you for being able to work. The reason I liked that attitude and behavior so much is because it contains a precious principle: to compensate something that increases sadness with something that increases happiness.
When the news I was talking about in a previous step stifles our optimism and sabotages our happiness, we feel a sense of helplessness, and that helplessness that they produce in us is often translated into phrases that are different versions of this one: “There is nothing to do. do”. But what if there was something to do, if there was a formula so that every time something very serious happens in the world, within 24 hours after the fact, the world improves? Attention to the next story.
When you find one dose of bad, fight it with two of good.Anxo Pérez , Speaker
A few years ago, I received the Entrepreneur of the Year award on the same day that there was an attack on a plane in an area of Eastern Europe where two sides were at odds. One side decided to shoot down that plane to get the attention of the international community. The scariest thing is that it was a commercial flight. The passengers not only had nothing to do with that conflict, they were not even citizens of that country. They all died. When I saw the news, I got a huge feeling of indignation , sadnessand impotence. Our team asked me not to talk about the attack in the pick-up speech, but I couldn’t not do it. The news had made my heart shrink. Obviously I am not going to include the entire speech on this step, but I will mention the phrase that encompasses its main message: how to turn a feeling of helplessness and turn it into a profitable action. I ask you to read it carefully; And the next time something saddens you as much as that attack saddened me, I would like you, me, and everyone who reads this book to do what that sentence says. It is the formula to never surrender neither to destruction nor to destroyers; in a word, so as not to succumb to pessimism:
Can you imagine that each person who reads a piece of news that gives us a feeling of helplessness, at the same moment that we read it, would look for two things to improve in the world, no matter how small, and improve them before twenty-four hours had elapsed? With this pact in everyone’s mind, no one would have the motivation to destroy or commit atrocities anymore, since, with each one, the world, instead of getting worse, would improve. It may seem utopian to you, but this is just what happened in the United States after the attacks on the Twin Towers. The river of humanity was so great that American civil society ended up turning its frustration into solidarity, ending up much stronger and more united than before the atrocities
