This too shall pass.

A deeper look at the Persian adage that completely changed my approach to bad situations.

It was the autumn of 2007. I was a first-year university student, here in Bulgaria, and a weirdly excited guy stopped me in the hallway asking, 'Do you speak English?'

I later learned this was a sales script that all the recruiters for the Southwestern Company (now Southwestern Advantage) used to strike a conversation with passing students, the end goal being getting them to join a summer work and travel program in the US. Alex, the guy who recruited me, had done the program last year and was forming his own team. I was in!

What were we going to do? Door-to-door sales in the US!

I won't bore you with all the program details (although if it sounds interesting and you like stepping out of your comfort zone, it's one of my life's most character-building and memorable experiences so far, so I highly recommend it).

In short, we got a lot of training, and about 50 of us (the Bulgarian organization) went to Colorado to sell educational programs door-to-door during the summer of 2008.

It was extreme. It sucked. It was painful. To this day, it remains one of the most epic experiences in my life. And the decision to join was one of my best decisions ever.

Got sidetracked again... Anyway, the worst part was the rejection. People yelled at you, slammed their doors, told you to get a real job, fun things like that. Some days with zero sales felt so bad that looking forward was hard. Sometimes, it was impossible to believe it would somehow get better.

And that's where Og Mandino came to the rescue. Og Mandino's book The Greatest Salesman in the World was the Southwestern Company's sales bible. It's a great short book (I still have my pocket-size version from 2008) that presents various mindsets required to become the greatest salesman in the world in the form of a story where the protagonist receives 10 scrolls to follow. Every morning, at breakfast, one of us would read a random scroll out loud to get us in the right mindset to hustle and handle rejection.

One of my absolute favorites was the one called I will laugh at the world, where the phrase was presented as a mindset.

Here's a short excerpt so you get a feeling of the book:

I will laugh at the world.

And how can I laugh when confronted with man or deed which offends me so as to bring forth my tears or my curses? Four words I will train myself to say until they become a habit so strong that immediately they will appear in my mind whenever good humor threatens to depart from me. These words, passed down from the ancients, will carry me through every adversity and maintain my life in balance. These four words are: This too shall pass.

I always found it a fascinating way to look at negative experiences. Whenever something bad happens, I repeat it to myself like some form of a mantra. I am still very anxious and worry about dumb stuff all the time, but I honestly believe things would've been much worse for me over the last 15 years if I didn't have This too shall pass in my mental toolbox.

I recently started wondering where it came from. Many of the scrolls in the book (e.g., I will greet this day with love in my heart) sounded more modern, while the wording in This too shall pass always felt a bit more mystical to me. I always thought it to be some proverb but, for some reason, never looked it up. I guess I was somewhat wary of the true meaning and didn't want to ruin my Og Mandino-inspired version of it.

Lately, I have been catching myself muttering it under my nose more and more often as I am facing some turbulence in my professional life, so I decided to finally see where it comes from.

Of course, it's a Persian adage that reflects the temporary nature of the human condition. What this meant for me when I first read it is that the phrase actually applies to the fleeting nature of both bad and good moments in life.

In terms of origin, the phrase in this wording seems to have first been used in the writings of Persian Sufi poets like Rumi. In Jewish folklore, the phrase is sometimes attributed to King Solomon. Abraham Lincoln also used it in a speech before becoming the 16th president, from where we can assume it started its notable presence in Western culture (or maybe not and I am completely wrong).

In this sense, the phrase has been used in various contexts like mental health and personal mantras. In our modern times, This too shall pass has been interpreted as a call to humility in glory and optimism in hardship.

However, in my perspective, seeing all good moments as fleeting first takes some of their magic away. Life is indeed fleeting, and time is our most precious non-renewable resource. But I refuse to look at good things with this mindset. I prefer to take everything good at face value, enjoy it, savor it, and turn it into a fond memory.

But when it comes to the bad things in life, the ones that manifest like a lump in your throat that won't go away, that's when I always come back to the mindset that This too shall pass. To be honest, it's never the first thing on my mind. I always struggle with anxious thoughts and worries, but I eventually manage to switch to this mindset. And that's always the turning point for me, from bad to less bad, all the way to good.

On the surface, it might seem almost like ignoring the problem, expecting it to go away on its own, but if you dig a bit deeper, it's so much more than that.

It's a mindset that allows you to be content with your situation and fully accept it. Realizing that it will eventually end, all that's left is to stop worrying and start acting. Freeing your mind from the dreadful feeling of powerlessness and fear of what might happen allows you to approach the bad thing more clearly and strive for the least harmful outcome.

I understand in some cases, there's no course of action, but even then, you can accept the situation and start figuring out how to deal with it mentally and emotionally.

I truly believe in the power of adopting specific mindsets for specific circumstances. This too shall pass is one of my favorites. Of course, it won't simply solve every problem you face, but it can significantly help in many cases. Try it out the next time you fail at something and feel like it's the end of the world. As it turns out, it rarely actually is.

I hope you found my ramblings compelling and you'll give This too shall pass a chance next time you struggle with something. You might be amazed at how effective it can be at taming your thoughts and helping you cope better in various bad situations.

That's all I have for you this week. Thank you for reading and extra brownie points to the ones who share this newsletter with friends you think may like it.

See you next week,
Dobri