From anger to gratitude: How a shift in perspective made my day

Recovered post

This article was recovered from my originally deleted blog.

Author: EmeraldOdin
Original date: Aug 1, 2020
Original category: Odins Journal

Morning, July 29. I just woke up, had a very nice lucid dream that lasted as long as a movie, and got up on my phone to check some messages on Discord. There was a message from someone I knew for a while now.

He said he was banned from a mutual server (a chat group in Discord) we were in. I was really surprised to hear that since I never had a problem with this guy. Don’t get me wrong, people get banned left and right, but he wasn’t just a guy that got banned to me. We both live in the same country and had a lot in common, I think that it was nice to be able to talk to him.

First I didn’t believe it, so I checked the server, and indeed he was banned. Then I asked in the server why he was banned and that I was shocked and just woke up so I missed everything that went on before. Nobody replied, and I was even asked to stop talking about it. It already happened, right? It’s in the past.

For me it wasn’t, I was asleep and didn’t know any better, for me it just happened. It’s very important to keep this in mind, but this is where my anger started to form – I thought: “Why do I always get a nice lucid dream on a day that is full of drama?!”

In the hours that followed, I started talking to an admin in DM’s and I noticed that he was very interested in both sides and was too, not happy with that someone had to be banned. This is where everything started to turn for the better. Normally speaking, I would have left the server, and blocked those that were responsible, including that admin. I looked back on all the times I did something similar, and I always had one result in the end: regret. If I did block everyone I wouldn’t have seen the admin’s other side which was very nice and non-toxic.

Today, I won’t let my emotions be the boss of me. They can guide, but not steer. They can advice, but not act.

I started meditating for a good 15 minutes and I began seeing from all sides: I saw the sides of the admins, I saw the sides of the other members asking me to stop, I saw the sides of the guy that got banned.

It suddenly hit me: The admins didn’t like to do this either. It wasn’t fun for everyone. All this time, I saw myself as the victim in this transaction together with the guy that got banned, but that’s not the case. We all lost something! There are no winners in banning someone from a community.

The members: they already were past this, and they didn’t know I was asleep, probably. This is all perfectly normal behavior. My anger started to diffuse into some kind of wonder, I don’t know, maybe even pride.

Then, I started readjusting my attitude: instead of being angry that I got a lucid dream, I started thinking: “I’m happy that I get a lucid dream because it helps me cope with difficult things during the day”.

Gratitude started to replace all the negative thoughts, and everything started to turn for the better. I took a break of 2 days, but in the end, I managed, and a perspective shift had caused me to deal with this in a normal way, and no damage was done.

The moral of the story is, look at good things with gratitude and make it so that it can be used as a soft sponge when things get nasty, the impact of it is less. For me, that is lucid dreaming, for you that could be a craft, writing, or gaming, who knows!