From "Why Me?" To "What Is This Teaching Me?"

When we face difficulty, our natural instinct is often to ask the disempowering question, 'Why is this happening to me?' However, this keeps us trapped in victimhood, whereas shifting our focus to 'What is this teaching me?' immediately unlocks our potential for growth and resilience. In this episode, we will explore how to make this powerful mental pivot so you can stop suffering through your challenges and start learning from them.

• Music by Aonescape from Pixabay

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Probably the most prevalent question that I get asked as a clinical psychologist working with individuals for over 30 years now is why is this happening to me?

It's a normal human response to pain.

We all do it.

When we lose our jobs that we've been devoted to,

Worked hard at,

And stayed at for over 20 years,

We're gonna ask,

Why is this happening to me?

When someone we so deeply loved cared for us,

We cared for them,

We have so many beautiful memories together,

Even children,

And now they're leaving,

We ask ourselves,

Why is this happening to me?

But there's two words in that phrase that lead to a dead end.

It's why me?

This is a closed door because it's looking for blame outside or inside but doesn't offer a path forward.

But what if we shifted this question?

We pivot to the concept of the student mindset.

Here we ask,

What is this teaching me?

With this very simple question,

What is this teaching me,

We turn the pain into a curriculum for our growth.

There's a trap for the why me question.

It's a victim mindset.

Within the psychology of victimhood,

When we ask why,

We are often unconsciously seeking to confirm that the universe is unfair or that we are unlucky.

Haven't we all known someone whose credo is life sucks,

Then we die?

It may add some levity to life,

But in truth,

Some people deeply believe this.

It's all about losing agency.

As long as we are the victims of agency,

We are powerless to change this horrific event and instead we wait for the world to change for us.

Then it creates this horrible loop of suffering.

Why me creates resistance.

And as the saying goes,

Pain is inevitable,

Suffering is optional.

Resistance creates the suffering.

We so badly want the world to change,

But truthfully,

The real change needs to come from us.

But when we fight life,

We are going to suffer.

There are hundreds,

Thousands,

Sometimes millions of events that lead up to what we're going through right now.

We can't and no one can control them all,

But we can shift the way we see them,

The way we interact with them,

The way we respond to them.

Let me now share three giants in history who made this shift.

Nelson Mandela,

The prominent leader that freed South Africa from the oppressive political structure of apartheid was in prison because of his beliefs for 27 years,

Much of it in a tiny cell on Robben Island.

What would you and I do if someone imprisoned us for trying to make other people's lives better?

Mandela,

Instead of asking why me,

He asked,

How can I use this time?

He learned Afrikaans,

The language of his oppressors,

So he could eventually negotiate peace in South Africa,

Which he did do after 27 years of imprisonment.

He beautifully said,

I never lose,

I either win or learn.

He turned oppression into lessons of patience.

And then there's Thomas Edison,

Whose lesson was detachment.

At 67,

His massive laboratory complex burnt to the ground,

Destroying years of work.

If this happened to us,

What would we do?

We might scream out,

Why me,

God?

But as he was watching the flames,

He didn't cry,

Why me?

He told his son,

Go get your mother and all of her friends.

They'll never see a fire like this again.

And then later he said,

All our mistakes are burnt up.

Thank God we can start anew.

And then there's the most beautiful soul of Viktor Frankl,

Who learned lessons of meaning.

He was stripped of everything in a Nazi prison camp,

A couple of years ago,

I visited Auschwitz in Poland.

And you really get to see what a horrific experience he must have gone through.

Frankl knew they could take away his liberty,

Which they did but they could not take away his freedom to choose his response.

He actually viewed his suffering as a psychological experiment that he had to survive to teach the world about meaning.

His beautiful and wise mantra that he created while he was in the Nazi prison camp was,

When we are no longer able to change a situation,

We are challenged to change ourselves.

How do we do this?

How do we,

When we perhaps right now are going through such a difficult time that is just overwhelming us,

How do we turn this into,

What is this teaching me?

The growth mindset.

This shift comes from seeing life as a school.

Here's the shift,

While we're on earth school,

We begin to see every difficult person or situation as a teacher specifically assigned to us.

Not why is this happening to me?

Why is life doing this to me?

Instead,

What is this teaching me?

What am I here to learn?

Can you just feel the shift in energy?

The energy changes from a heavy,

Helpless to a active,

Curious.

We become a detective in our own lives.

It's a shift from why me to what now?

For example,

The why me,

Why is the traffic so bad today?

What now?

This is teaching me patience and how to enjoy my own company in silence.

The why me,

Why is he so rude to me?

The what now?

This is teaching me not to rely on others for my validation.

I wanna share some good news about developing the growth mindset.

I think there's an idea that we're gonna be fighting life for the rest of our lives.

We have to just keep tackling these situations over and over again.

The truth is,

As we tackle some situations,

They don't occur again because we've tackled them.

Many,

Many years ago,

I learned to drive not in a hurry.

I don't do it perfectly,

But I do it pretty well.

Mostly when I go somewhere,

I take my time.

I kinda saunter to get there.

I give myself time to get there early so I don't have to rush.

And it makes driving and going places,

Traveling,

Flying so much better,

So much more relaxing.

It isn't a struggle that I grit my teeth and say,

Here we go again.

Since I've learned the lesson that rushing through life for me exhausted me,

I stopped rushing.

That was my lesson.

And now,

When I get to places,

I may get there early,

But I get there in a relaxed manner.

It's a lesson I don't have to keep learning.

I've learned it.

And then the second thing is,

When new lessons arise and they do,

There's always things going to challenge us in life.

We start developing a trust that we're going to respond well to this.

This is just a lesson for me to learn,

To grow,

To make me a better person.

With that attitude,

When crises of life do come,

And they do,

We see them so differently.

We begin to trust in our ability to adapt to anything because we know that's the one thing we control,

Our way in which we choose to adapt,

To respond to any situation that comes our way.

If you ever want to read an incredibly inspiring story about someone who's actually facing death because he has ALS and does it beautifully,

I'd encourage you to read Tuesdays with Maury by Mitch Elbaum.

Maury was a successful college professor who slowly died from ALS.

One of the most memorable and beautiful parts of the book for me was when Maury reached a point and he knew it was coming where someone was going to have to wipe his own butt.

But he did it beautifully,

Even with humor.

The one thing I've learned in life,

Again,

Working with so many people that struggle,

Is that we can overcome anything.

If our goal is what is this teaching me and seeing life as a school,

And we're a top student,

Not because we're gifted,

Not because we're born with it,

But because we've decided to work hard.

And the number one thing we work at,

No matter what life is throwing at us right now,

Is what is this teaching me?

So how do we do this?

There are three actionable steps that we take to shift from why me to what is this teaching me.

Step one is catch the complaint.

We have to be aware in the moment that we've slipped into why me.

We're looking for feelings of self-pity.

This is a trigger of why me.

Step two is we hit the pause button.

We stop the mental spiral and we take a breath.

And then step three is we ask the magic questions,

Like what skill is this situation forcing me to develop?

Patience,

Courage,

Forgiveness?

Where in my life was I asleep and this woke me up?

And then perhaps a very deep question we can ask ourselves is,

If I chose this experience for my own growth,

Why have I chosen it?

That's a deep question that many of us may not be able to quite grasp yet.

But if we begin to see that life is our school and we have chosen to learn things,

Then it shifts and we become the student instead of the victim.

In conclusion,

We cannot control what happens to us,

But we have 100% control over how we interpret it.

The most successful people aren't those who escaped hardship.

They're the ones who squeeze the most wisdom out of it.

And then if you're open to this,

Perhaps for the next 24 hours,

Treat every annoyance as a lesson and ask the question,

Not why is this happening to me,

But what is this teaching me?

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

Another fantastic talk. Thank you 🙏

Another super, super lesson 🙏

Always great advice Dr Puff.

Muchas gracias, me ayudó mucho escucharte 🙏

I will definitely be using this. Thank you.

This was s great talk, thank you. I was just thinking tonight as I was being triggered. No, stop taking things personal and learn from it!
I love this quote from Nelson Mandela:" I never lose. I either win or learn."