Stop Labelling Your Situation

You never know how things will play out

As humans, we have this proclivity to label and categorise everything, including our experiences. Two labels we often use are, “good” and “bad.” Of course, things aren’t always black and white, so we have different degrees of good and bad besides middle ground labels, but ultimately our experiences get thrown into one of the two.

You’d think it would be pretty easy to categorise what’s good or bad, right? I mean, if you won a million pounds, that would be good; if you lost money or hurt yourself, that would be bad, right?

I recently came across a Chinese proverb that made me realise, labelling your circumstances isn’t so straightforward

The story goes:

A farmer and his son had a horse who helped the family earn a living. One day the horse ran away and the farmer’s neighbours said, “your horse has run away, what terrible luck!” “Maybe,” replied the farmer.

Sometime later, the horse returned with a group of wild mares. The neighbours then said, “your horse has returned with several other horses, what great luck!” “Maybe,” replied the farmer.

Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the mares and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The neighbours said, “your son has broken his leg, what terrible luck!” “Maybe,” replied the farmer.

A couple of weeks later, the army marched through town recruiting young men. They did not take his son as he was recovering from his injury. The neighbours said, “Your boy was spared, what great luck!”

Do you want to guess what the farmer replied?

“Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The moral of the story is that you never know whether something is good or bad because you don’t know how things will play out.

This is so true when you look at life. There are so many unknown variables. You don’t know how certain circumstances are going to affect other parts of your life. You don’t know how things are going to play out in the future and what might be of value as time passes. Essentially, we just don’t have enough context to actually determine what is really good or bad.

I know that in my life there have been plenty of situations I thought were terrible; Plenty of times where I felt I wouldn’t be able to get over something and that it was going to ruin my life. However, sometime later it actually turned out to be the best thing for me.

Sometimes painful situations can be a stimulus for change, which ends up enriching your life in ways you could never have imagined. Sometimes things that you think are great end up actually decreasing the quality of your life: things that lifted you up can end up becoming burdens.

This principle can be illustrated perfectly when you look at some of the most successful people in the world. I’ve read a lot on high-performance individuals; I’m always listening to podcasts and interviews with people who have done great things: David Goggins, Tony Robbins, Eckhart Tolle, Richard Branson, etc. No matter what discipline, one common factor has always been that they have each gone through some form of extreme pain, discomfort, or misfortune. This has then given them the drive, perspective, and mental toughness to do the extreme tasks necessary to achieve greatness. I’m sure that at the time they were going through these things if you’d asked them whether it was a good or bad thing, they would have said it was terrible. However, at the same time — and most of them acknowledge this — they wouldn’t be where they are without having gone through those things.

Even down to the less famous but still relatively successful people I have followed: Mike Rashid and Brandon Carter in the fitness community; Brian Rose from London Real, in the podcasting field; Grant Cardone & Patrick Bet-David in the business, sales & real estate fields. You’ll find each of these characters has an extremely difficult past underlying their success.

If you look at some of your own personal heroes and dig deep into their history, I can guarantee most, if not all of them, have a past characterised or featured with extreme pain. Whether that’s drug addiction, poverty, abuse or crippling debt, etc.

Even some of the most seemingly pointless painful experiences that you can’t see any chance of deriving value from can turn out differently from what you think. I remember an interview that Dan Bilzerian had on the Joe Rogan podcast. He described a conversation that he had at one of his parties with an ex-army vet who had lost his legs. This vet told him that losing his legs was one of the best things that had happened to him. After the initial shock and depression, he said his life had changed for the better in ways he had never expected: He no longer had to go through some of the arduous life-threatening military duties, he still got his check each month, people ended up treating him with so much respect and admiration, plus a whole new host of opportunities became open to him.

Great situations can end up being some of the worst possible things for you. Earlier, I stated that most people would assume that winning a large sum of money was a good thing. However, there have been several instances in which lottery winners have said they regret cashing in on their ticket. Where winning the lottery actually ruined their lives. In fact, this has happened often enough that people have come up with a phrase for it: “The lottery curse.”

When these seemingly ‘lucky’ lottery winners cashed in on their millions, they found the winnings were accompanied by a whole host of other issues which they had never expected. Issues such as attracting the wrong type of people in their lives — gold diggers. Constantly being bombarded by requests for money from people who they thought were their friends. Frivolous lawsuits being opened by people regularly in order to squeeze as much money as possible from them. Some winners, who never had money before, ended up spending it irresponsibly and getting themselves into terrible situations. It’s like the saying goes, “with great power comes great responsibility.”

A lot of these winners ended up losing all their money, depressed, suicidal (sometimes actually committing suicide), and one person was actually murdered because of their newfound wealth.

If you want to look up some of these people yourself, I’d suggest Billy Bob Harrell Jr, Jack Whittaker, and Abraham Shakespeare: their stories are crazy.

So, next time you’re going through a tough time, next time you’re feeling a little hopeless or experiencing something you think is terrible; just remember, you don’t know how everything is going to play out; you don’t know what this could lead to or how it could affect your life in the future.

Rather than labelling everything as good or bad, just try to experience things for what they are. Take things in your stride, enjoy what can be enjoyed, take what you can from pain and discomfort with as little judgment as you can manage. Then see how things play out as life unfolds.

Of course, I am not saying that every seemingly bad situation is going to turn out great. All I am saying is, you really don’t know. You just don’t have enough information and context to say whether something is really good or bad. And if you admit you don’t know, then you can’t condemn yourself or your situation. You don’t need to know things are going to turn out well in order to feel better and have hope; all you need is to know that it’s possible.

And of course, this is easier said than done, but try to practice it as much as you can and you’ll find that life moves along much more seamlessly and enjoyably.

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