Several years ago, while on vacation, I was staying at my parent’s house in Karachi. On a balmy summer afternoon, I decided to take a stroll in the park amid the colony of houses. This little community park is usually bustling in the afternoon with children playing and elderly grandparents keeping an eye on them. There are groups of teenagers huddled together sharing adolescent gossip and women who have finished their chores talking away at leisure.
Amid this genial crowd of neighbors some of whom we’ve known since we were children, an unfamiliar woman walked up to me and introduced herself as the new tenant in a nearby house. She asked me whether I was a tenant too and I will never forget the look in her eyes when I said I wasn’t. It was the look of unconcealed admiration.
Her wordless expression suddenly brought me profound realizations in a matter of moments. I had never considered what a blessing it was to have lived in a gated little neighborhood with a park, in a house of our own, in the insanely huge city of Karachi that is rife with violence and crime.
I was similarly dumbfounded once when a hairstylist randomly commented while giving me a haircut that I had the perfect hair and complexion and then sighed saying, ‘Some people have it all’. I was dumbfounded really. The picture I had of myself was a stick-thin, youngster with lots of acne!
In all honesty, my self-image was not entirely wrong but it wasn’t complete either.
In retrospect now, having had a multitude of wonderful and dreadful experiences, I wonder why most of us are stuck with what we do not have rather than relishing what we do?
For almost everyone that is currently alive, there are countless more things that work compared to those that don’t. The very fact that we are alive is a testament to more things working within us than the ones that do not. It is an inescapable fact that most often it is our perception alone that makes us think that failure and frustration is our lot.
Psychologists are coming to agree that people who are more focused on what has worked for them, or in other words, are grateful, are more creative and can solve challenging problems faster than ones who do not. Research has revealed that people who have a habit of positive thinking tend to have a bigger hypothalamus; the region in the brain concerned with problem solving and creativity. And even more incredible is the fact that the brain’s anatomy can change with the change in our thought patterns.
So give a thought to what you have and be grateful for it. It’s a monumental shift and worth the effort.