How you think is important!

This is a feeling that happens to me every time I go abroad for a long time.
When I just got back, I feel like “I’m back in reality!”
But after a certain number of days have passed, I feel as if that time abroad was just a dream!

When I talk to my father-in-law and mother-in-law on Facetime, I get a little sentimental and feel lonely, but now it’s normal as usual.
I wonder what it is? I wonder if the human brain is made not to continue such things.

The photo is an Indian restaurant in the neighborhood where we went for dinner the day after we arrived in Perth.
The Butler family likes Indian, Thai, and other spicy Asian dishes!
So we probably go out to eat Asian food more often than like Italian food.

At that time, we had just arrived at the restaurant, so we were really happy to have this kind of foreign cuisine, but after a few days, I got used to it, and after a few more days, I start to miss Japanese food.
But now that Japanese food has become the norm, I miss this kind of food.
It’s amazing how the brain works to want what it doesn’t have! lol

This has nothing to do with the brain mechanism, but I recently learned the words “circle of concern” and “circle of influence”. This is very interesting, and I think it will make things a lot easier if you know and can do it, so I’ll share it with you!
It’s hard to explain in my own words, so I’ll just copy and paste.

A “circle of concern” is a set of things that we are interested in in our daily lives. And within the “circle of concern,” the “circle of influence” is the things that we can influence and control. For example, “our own attitudes, thoughts, words, and actions” are our circle of influence, and “the attitudes and thoughts of others” are our circle of concern.

I’ve found this to be true in many situations lately, that you can’t change “other people’s attitudes and ideas,” so you shouldn’t have any expectations or hopes there, and you shouldn’t even try to change them! Before I didn’t understand this, I used to get angry at people’s attitudes and tried to correct them by giving them advice.
But that was a huge waste of time and effort! I’m still a work in progress, so I haven’t perfected it yet, but I heard that if you know these things and keep them in mind, you can develop a habit of thinking in this direction.

How is this connected to the “circle of concern” and the “circle of influence”?
Even in our past and events that we cannot change, we can change our feelings, impressions, perceptions, and meanings of events, and we can increase our independence in our lives by focusing on how we can bring them into our “circle of influence,” the one that we can change. If you can focus on increasing your circle of influence, you will be more likely to succeed in life.
On the other hand, if you are obsessed with the past and other people’s attitudes that you cannot change, when you are not satisfied with the results of what you do, you will blame others, saying that the environment was not good or that someone else is to blame.

Do you understand my explanation?(If you are interested, search for “circle of concern” and “circle of influence” and you will find a lot.)
I used to have no interest in this kind of thinking, but now, because of social networking sites, there is an overload of information, both good and bad, and I get a lot of information I don’t need.
This makes me irritated, worried about what other people are saying and doing, and I was using unnecessary emotions! And that’s when you can switch your focus to what you can do!

(On the other hand, if you give advice to someone because you think it’s good, but if it doesn’t work out, it makes you more angry and negative, which is a common phenomenon in today’s Internet society.)

People often say that everything depends on how you think, and the more I learn about it, the more I think that’s true!
It’s better to output what you’ve learned than to keep it to yourself.
That’s why I’m using the blog to output! I love having a place where I can do this.