What's the message?

What's the message by:  Yasmin Mogahed 

This is an important quote by Yasmin Mogahed, which I think basically means that what happens to you , whether good or bad does not signify anything, as its the way you react and how you see the situation is what is really important and can affect your life. 

When she says, "Change your lens and you change your life', for example when you look at the glass half full, rather than half empty. So when you look at the negative parts of the situation, you will only complain and be sad about that but if you look at the positive aspects, and see the good things first, your response will be different and you wont be as depressed or sad. For example, when something happens that upsets me, like my father yelling at me or losing in a competition, if I look at the situation from the negative aspect only, which is that I am angry for him yelling or me losing, it would affect my life afterwards because in the example with my father, I would stay being upset for weeks and so would he and we would end up not talking to each other and this can stress me out and affect my studying or my performance in training and me not being focused and I would be irritated and not comfortable in general. But, if I reacted in a different way, like simply talking to him and see what was upsetting him, for him to yell at me and explained to him my point of view for doing what I did etc. this would have changed the whole situation afterwards and things would be smoother. "seek first to understand , then be understood', Steven Covey said in the 7 habits of highly effective people. So in this example, this is how we should react- to first understand the situation before reacting in a wrong way , which can make us lose a-lot of good things and lose people.

The other example about the competition is also relevant here, because if I lose in any tournament and get depressed and down, this affects my performance in the days to follow, as our tournaments are at least 3-4 consecutive days and sometimes a whole week or more, especially if there are semi finals and finals (in world championships). If I react in a positive way and analyze the reasons why I lost, then this can make me avoid the same mistake and do better on the following days, but when I get upset and depressed, this makes me perform worse the following days and then lose the whole tournament, rather than just lose on one board!

so, I think this quote is very important and people should really think well about their response, after any situation and not be too impulsive in reacting in a certain way, so they do not regret it afterwards!