For strong mental health, we must understand the difference between the words subjective and objective. Subjective is a word that has more to do with opinions, emotions, and feelings, while the word Objective has more to do with facts, logic, and truth. Our ability to separate these ideas will either increase or decrease our mental health and our capability to persevere through life’s hardest moments.
Let’s use an example. I am driving on the interstate and someone cuts me off in traffic. Objectively, this is all that happened: I was driving and another driver pulled in front of me. But the subjective emotions and opinions I have inside of me are crazy! I get angry, mumble under my breath (or out loud to the others in my car), I may or may not show physical frustration, and the temptation will be there to ride on the other driver’s bumper as a sign of disrespect.
If you were to ask me what happened there while I was still angry, I would explain to you both the objective facts of the situation and the subjective feelings I felt, all in an emotional blob of chaos. I would likely justify why I was in the right and why the other driver was in the wrong. There would likely not be any effort on my part to separate the facts from the emotions.
And my mental health would suffer because of it.
Strong mental discipline requires us to separate the facts of the situation from our emotions about the situation. While our emotions are real, valid, and affect every area of our lives, they are not the same thing as situational facts or truth. The popular question and answer come to mind: “When someone spits in your face, what does that make you?” Most people would reply, “That would make me angry.” But the facts are that it would make you wet; you would choose to be angry.
Life is a crazy mixture of subjective emotions and objective facts. If we’re not able to tell them apart, we are destined to believe that our emotions are as factual as gravity, or that truth is as relative as our momentary feelings. Once we learn to identify the difference between these parts of life, we will gain a firm foundation to reframe the circumstances and hold onto anchors of truth that can keep us firm through the subjective stream of opinions and emotions.
Separate facts from emotions and you have a better chance to handle whatever comes at you.
Just a thought.
