By not taking control of our thoughts and emotions, we are abdicating personal responsibility for our own mental health
Unfortunately, by not taking control of our thoughts and emotions, we are abdicating personal responsibility for our own mental health. A very basic psychological principle is that we humans base our actions, and our attitude, on how we perceive things to be. If we perceive that we are in an impossible situation, it is then easy for our minds to just shut down and do nothing to try to change our circumstances. In other words, we resign ourselves to the situation, whatever that may be. When we are in resignation mode, we have given up any sense of personal empowerment, and that is not a good place to be mentally, emotionally, or physically.
One of the most amazing things about human beings is that we have the power to make our own choices. In other words, we have free will. Even under the worst possible circumstances, we can still choose our attitude, as Dr. Viktor Frankl, an Austrian Jewish psychologist, demonstrated so well in his inspiring book titled Man’s Search for Meaning (1946). In spite of the harsh living conditions Dr. Frankl endured in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, he was able to see the good and the positive in daily life. Even while walking out to the field he was assigned to work in, Frankl was able to see beauty in the new day--the warm colors of the rising sun, the flowers in the field, or the snow-covered trees. He was able to do this because he knew how to choose his attitude. The other choice he could have made was to feel sorry for himself as he marched along with the other prisoners, but he knew that having a negative attitude would not make his day easier, only harder physically and emotionally.
A National Science Foundation article published in 2005 claims the average person has 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day and that 80% of those thoughts are negative. With that much negativity in our mind, it would be very easy to become angry, mean, bitter, depressed, or just plain hopeless about the future. Fortunately, most of us are more resilient than we think we are, and Viktor Frankl understood that. He said, "When we are no longer able to change a situation . . . we are challenged to change ourselves." If you are still feeling angry about having to wear face masks and be "locked down" due to COVID-19 restrictions, I challenge you to change your attitude and decide how you want to live your life from this day forward. As psychological researchers Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman commented in their 2010 book How God Changes Your Brain, "Only human beings can think themselves into happiness or despair, without any influence from the outside world."
