Transcript

Responding #1129 · From Chad

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His lucky day started with a hole in his roof.
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There's a story behind that. This is your daily message from
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Chad #1129 to upgrade your mental game today by telling
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yourself a better story. Because the most important story
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you hear is the story you tell yourself.
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And this message is dedicated to Jason Viar.
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Here's the upgrade. When something crashes into your
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life, you see the damage. But upgraded thinking asked what
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the impact delivered. Here's the story.
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On July 16th, 2024, a home owner in Hillsborough, NJ heard a
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crash upstairs. There was a hole in the master
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bedroom ceiling, black fragments on the bed, dust on the carpet,
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the smell of sulfur in the air. A rock had ridden in from the
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asteroid belt and come through his roof at 32,000 mph.
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The Sonic boom was felt in New York City, 48 miles away.
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People in five states saw the fireball.
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Most of us would call that a disaster, an insurance claim the
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day everything went wrong. Most people run their whole
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lives on one equation. E equals O event equals outcome.
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Something bad happens, so a bad outcome follows.
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A wrecked bedroom equals a ruined year.
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Well, Jack Canfield upgraded the math like this.
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E plus R = O Event plus response equals outcome.
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You have agency control in the R, your response.
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The Stoics go one step deeper. Hiding between the event and the
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response is a judgement, so the equation is E plus J plus r = O.
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Before you respond to anything, you decide what it means.
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Marcus really has said it this way.
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If any external thing causes you distress, it's not the thing
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itself that troubles you, but your own judgment about it.
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And this you have the power to eliminate right now.
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I'll repeat that if any external thing causes you distress, it's
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not the thing itself that troubles you, but your own
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judgement about it. And this you have the power to
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eliminate right now. Watch the equation work.
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Think about this event with the meteorite.
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A rock wrecks the bedroom. The judgement the homeowner
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made. This is not wreckage.
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This might be worth something. The response that followed from
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that judgment, he got disposable gloves, aluminum foil, glass
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jars. He preserved the fragments like
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evidence. The outcome?
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Well, now, two years later, scientists from NASA and SETI
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Institute published their findings in Science Advances.
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The rock now named Hillsborough is one of the rarest meteorites
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ever recorded, soaked in ancient brines and carrying amino acids,
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the building blocks of life. NASA's Mike Zielinski said
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thanks to the homeowners quick reaction, these are the most
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pristine meteorites of this kind we know of.
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Same event, different judgement. The whole equation changes.
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Another home owner sweeps those fragments into the trash and
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files an insurance claim. Same rock, same hole.
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The event didn't determine the outcome.
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That judgement did. That's why Viktor Frankel says
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freedom lives in the gap between stimulus and response.
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It's not avoiding the stimulus. In the gap where you choose what
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it means, something will crash into your life.
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Not maybe will. You can't control the event.
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You control the judgement, and the judgement drives the
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response and the response rights the outcome.
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The event doesn't decide the outcome.
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You do a diagnosis, A rejection, a loss, a phone call.
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The question is not whether you get hit.
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The question is whether you treat the wreckage like garbage
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or like a gift. The better story to tell
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yourself is this impact is carrying a gift.
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Preserve the fragments. Slow down before you react.
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Don't let the sulfur smell of the first day convince you
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nothing good landed. Some of what crashes into you
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traveled a long way to get here and it may take two years before
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you find out what it is carrying.
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Tell me a story of a crash that turned out to be a delivery to
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from chad.smith@gmail.com. Send someone to text and ask
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them what hit you. That turned out to be a gift.
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You can get a free copy of my book, The Most Owerful Story in
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the World, by going to fromchad.gumroad.com.
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The transcript of this message and hundreds of others are
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always available at www.fromchad.com.