Hannah's x-country season began this week. They had their first race at Northwood and she ran with as much mental guts as I have ever seen. A lot of emotion was floating through her heart as one of her closest friends is moving away. This friend was also a key member of the team. There were other girls who were weepy too because of that. Mark Batterson tells this story... a study done by Professor Vicki Medvec reveals the relative importance of subjective attitudes over and above objective circumstances. For instance... Olympic bronze medalists were quantifiably happier than silver medalists. Here's why; Silver medalists focused on how close they were to winning the gold, so they were not satisfied with silver; bronze medalists tended to focus on how close they came to not winning a medal at all, so they were just happy to be on the medal stand.
Conclusion: How we feel isn't determined by objective circumstances, if that were the case , Silver winners would be happier than Bronze medalists. How we feel isn't circumstantial , it is perceptual, our feeling are determined by our subjective focus.
All that to say this, we can control our responses to situations by what we focus on!
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