Last Monday, I was playing basketball against some neighborhood kids and my back seized up. It was a classic "I'm getting old" moment. I could barely breathe from the back spasms!

The very next day, my cat was sitting on his window bed and saw a lizard on the other side of the glass. He leapt for it. When he landed, something crazy happened, because I heard him hissing and panicking. When I turned around, I saw him dangling from his back foot, which had gotten stuck in the bed's wire framework.

So I went over to help him, and in his panicked state, he bit me like a pitbull! I couldn't believe it. When he bit down even harder, I screamed and flung him across the room and everyone involved panicked lol. It would have been a funny scene to see.

In the emergency room, I laughed and thought to myself, "Hey, at least my back feels a little bit better." I got a tetanus shot, antibiotics, and hopefully no long term nerve damage in my thumb (we'll see).

Change Your Perspective Indirectly

I was talking to a friend about my incidents, and his rough time with a recent motorcycle accident. It reminded me of how important perspective is.

Perspective is more involved than just "looking on the bright side." Its literal meaning is:

"a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view."

I think most of us think about it as attitude. But look at that second part. A point of view. Could that be an even better way to approach it? Because we all know a positive change in perspective can help, but how do you get there? "Think happy thoughts" and other banal ideas are of limited use when you're in the thick of it.

Perhaps a more powerful way to think about perspective is point of view. Which viewpoint of your situation is going to give you the best results? There is one that to my knowledge always works well.

The Best Point of View Gives You Power

The happiest and most resilient people tend to focus on what they can control. The most miserable people ruminate on the past and/or things they can't control. I would bet my life on that.

This makes sense, right? Focusing on what you control puts you in a position of power. It's all of the things you CAN do. Focusing on what happened to you or your limitations makes you feel less powerful or even powerless, because you can't affect those outcomes.

There's no rule preventing you from focusing on what you control or what happens to you. It is your choice, truly. Choose the powerful option every time.

The series of events that made my gentle and friendly cat chomp on my hand were very unlikely. And I've struggled in the past with thinking "I'm unlucky" (gambling didn't help). Getting bitten by my cat—who had never bitten or scratched a human before—right after a scary back injury? It all felt like a cosmic joke or that I was cursed in some way. At some point before my emotional state became unbearably dark, I switched my focus to what I could do next:

1. Take my antibiotics
2. Rest and care for the wound
3. Buy some prepared food because I only have one usable hand

What. A. Difference!

That simple list revitalized me more than you can imagine. It was the best I could do to fix the situation. Most important of all, it gave me a feeling of power again. What I could do was clearly not impressive, but it was something.

As an added perk, while none of this experience was fun, having a great excuse to be lazy for a couple days wasn't so bad. I found myself kind of happy about that! But only because I decided to focus on my nexus of control and not "woe to me, my friendly cat panic-bit me. My back still hurts, and oh yeah those 16 other problems on my mind!"

This is key: the best way to change your perspective might not be direct. For example:

I'm mad about this, so I will try to be calm about this. (direct attempt)

I'm mad about this, so I will do this other thing. (indirect attempt)

The indirect method may seem cowardly, or that you're brushing a problem aside, but it's usually the opposite! The moment I stopped ruminating about my bad luck (and how I felt about it) was when I could focus on moving forward and improving the situation.

Shifting your focus to controllable actions you can take now is empowering and it relieves obsessive thinking about things you can't control.

The human emotional system is tricky. Because when something bad happens, emotions can come on strong, and strong emotions do what? Multiply. Being angry makes me furious! It's awfully sad to see yourself cry. See what I mean? Whatever emotion you feel tends to feed upon itself until something stops that process.

My point is that when you react emotionally to an event, it's incredibly easy to dramatize it out of proportion! You're feeling strong emotions, and that's fine, but those emotions might then convince you that the world is ending when it's just the first of 19 breakups you'll experience in your life. (For the record, I hope this is the ONLY cat bite I experience.)

Whatever you're going through, right now, think about simple next steps you can take. Consider where your power still lies, and focus on THAT, not on things you don't like, but can't control. The cool thing about life is that we always have power.

To close this out, I'll leave you with a quote from the king of managing adversity (Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl).

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

― Viktor E. Frankl

I just love that. It's such powerful guidance for tough times.

Now, I won't show you the initial bite because it's gruesome, but here is a picture of the healing bite if you're morbidly curious. And here is a picture of the biter himself. Looks can be deceiving, huh?

Cheers,

Stephen Guise

PS. Frodo the cat is fine and I don't fault him for reacting in a panicked state. I still love him 100% and we remain best buddies!

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