A Simple Mental Shift to Revolutionize Your Daily Life

An amazing perspective to make you genuinely happy for others

Something shifted and changed in me forever when I read this quote by Hugh Prather (see the footnote) in his book Love and Courage:

“To want something from another is so utterly misunderstand their role in our happiness. Other people are our opportunity to extend what we ARE.”

We spend a lifetime asking for things from others, don’t we?

We ask for love.

We ask for attention.

We ask for fidelity and gratitude.

These are publicly accepted forms of asking.

We also ask for other things from others that we cannot voice that publicly since it lays bare our egotism and greed.

How many times you “wished” you lived in a home just like that ocean-side mansion that your best friend has bought recently?

Poisonous “Wishes”

Such desires are always cloaked in the form of “wishes” to hide the green-eyed jealously lurking just below the surface of polite conversation.

But it’s asking all the same; asking for something that we don’t have at the moment, whether it’s expressed in erudite phrases or not.

A Pragmatic Reason for Change

You may ask “but why should we change?

Why should we quit asking for stuff from others?

Don’t everybody do that?

Isn’t that the normal human predicament and condition?”

My answer is a pragmatic one: what was the last time you received what you were asking for from others? And if you did, how long did it last?

I honestly cannot remember when I got what I asked for from the others. It’s a fool’s errand. It’s the equivalent of banging your head on a wall and expecting the wall to hug you and caress you. I don’t know about you but for me, that’s reason enough to quit asking something from others. Pain avoidance is a good enough reason to try to find another way to interact with my friends and loved ones.

The Real Reason

The real reason why we want this or that from our friends and other people is we think and feel we are separate from them. They are THEM and we are US. It sounds so simple, obvious, and elementary, doesn’t it?

But in a cosmological sense, we are all one. We all come from sticky fluid matter and end up in the bosom of rich fragrant earth. There is no separation when it comes to basic blunt facts that command and dictate the beginning and end of our lives on this planet earth.

Leaving such a wide-angle aside, to me it’s clear that the reason why feel separate from the others is purely mental. It’s nothing more than yet another idea.

Diagnosis is easy but what is the cure?

I say replacing that sense and feeling of “I’m not them” with something else.

Others as Our Extensions

And Hugh Prather suggests a wonderful alternative: imagining that others are an extension of us. Such a seemingly impossible but thrilling idea isn’t it?

How would that work?

How can I start to see others as my “extension” instead of my competitors for limited love and resources?

I started to admit something that I always knew and felt but rarely admitted in public:

I could do anything that some other individual did, both in a good and bad sense, but did not do it for one reason or another.

Yes, there is something to be said about the extraordinary genius-level talent that some people seem to bring with them at birth.

But overall, I always felt that with enough dedication and work, I could achieve anything I like and become anyone I like.

For example, I had several excellent opportunities in life to become an engineer but I consciously turned my back to the opportunity and instead devoted all my love and energies to become a writer (a choice which to this date I do not regret).

Again, I had an excellent chance when I was growing up to change my educational choices a bit and become a foreign service official, a diplomat. Again, I listened to my inner voice and preferred to continue to read my magazines and novels and work on to become a professional writer.

Transform your days into a cautionary magic tale of universal compassion and understanding.

Others as My Surrogates and Stand-Ins

So now today, every time I see an engineer or a diplomat, it’s almost like I’m looking at a variation and version of myself that I chose not to embrace, own, and become.

The engineer or diplomat friend of mine is really, in a very concrete sense of the word, IS an extension of myself. That person is almost like my surrogate, my stand-in, another version of my life (like Version 2.0) that I can live through vicariously without quitting the writer-me who is typing these words.

It’s like having another life, multiplied by the number of friends I have, lived on my behalf simultaneously by the others.

The logical corollary of this perspective shift is, I start to care more for my engineer or diplomat friends just as though I’m caring for myself, the other potential self that I left at an early fork in the road for something else.

The Dark Shadow

But this shift has a dark shadow as well that I need to be careful about.

Why?

Because they are not all good and positive stuff that I share with others.

As an example, let me mention my impatience (for which I’m famous) and occasional anger that is kindled by such impatience.

Partially that’s fed by an excess of God-given biophysical energy. I’m grateful for that gift.

But it’s also fed by a deluded sense of ego, accomplishment, and advancement in life. I have to admit.

There were many times I felt lucky that my impatience and impulses did not lead to a disaster.

It’s a well-known fact that most violence, for example, takes place at home.

According to NCADV (National Coalition Against Domestic Violence) statistics, 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner.

That impulsive anger is yet another extension of my personality that I luckily learned to control and to a large extent disown, without eradicating it totally from the population at large. I did not become an engineer, but engineers exist. I also did not become a domestic abuser, but abusers do exist.

Becoming a murderer or a felon is another fork in the road that I didn’t take just like the engineering or foreign-service forks that I ignored. But I’m fully aware that, if I weren’t careful enough or if the conditions were different, that’s another fate that life could’ve left easily on my plate. There is no need to be cocky and humility is in order.

Extending in Both Directions

This understanding, the mental shift that forces me to realize what I share with all the others, becomes an “opportunity to extend what we are” in both directions.

On the one hand, I love and appreciate my friends more for accomplishing things that remained as potentialities for me.

On the other hand, I also have more compassion and mercy for my other set of stand-ins and surrogates who took the dark turn on the road and exercised a set of ugly choices that luckily remained as distant possibilities for me.

In both cases I feel my life is enriched with an expanded circle of understanding that encompasses both the light and the dark aspects of life. I can reach out and touch both Yin and Yang without any fear or jealousy.

When my friends win, I cry with happiness just as though I won something. They show me what I could’ve become had I chosen that path.

When someone I don’t even know falls, I cry with pain just as if I lost something personally because that person, in another life, could very well be me.

It’s a simple shift, considering others as your extension, but your life will never be the same.

Your days will transform into a cautionary magic tale of universal compassion and understanding.

Who is Hugh Prather (1938–2010)?

Hugh Edmondson Prather III was an American self-help writer, lay minister, and counselor, most famous for his first book, Notes to Myself, which was first published in 1970, sold over 5 million copies, and has been translated into ten languages.