Whatever situation we encounter, it is a mix of things we can change and things we can’t change.

There is art in rediscovering every day what it is, that we can’t change.

And once we discovered what it is, it is up to us to figure out, how to deal with it.

Two essential tools serve us well in these situations. One is our ability to check in with reality. The other is our attitude.

I’m not a big fan of a positive attitude whenever its objective is to focus on the positive aspects of the situation. That’s because we’ll easily confuse positive with something that feels good. It is part of our first and automatic assessment of any situation. It will tell us what we like and what we dislike.

While it is useful to have a quick assessment, it rarely is the last one, when we start to check in with reality.

The pandemic changed many of our habits in profound ways. For more than a year I’ve mainly been in small crowds. The only means of transportation I’ve been using were mine. And when it comes to meeting friends, things have been massively reduced. All of these belong to the things I’m missing. However, this doesn’t mean that going back to them is easy. It actually doesn’t feel comfortable. I can see how I’m hesitating to get back into old habits.

I could take the discomfort and assume that there is a problem with my plan. I can also try to discipline myself into seeing only the positive aspects of getting back to “normal”. Or I can realize, that I’ve simply not been doing it for too long and need to become accustomed to that feeling again.

There is no use in changing the feeling. It is there. It is one element of our reality.

How we integrate it into a larger context depends on our attitude. That will tell us what we can change.