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Our perception of reality is some combination of the actual events, and how we process them.
How we process reality is in some part involuntary (due to our biology, previous experiences etc.) and in some part voluntary.
The voluntary part is seen in how we choose to view an experience in a certain way. For example, you might get hit by a car and choose to see yourself as unlucky for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or you might choose to see yourself as lucky for surviving.
To the extent that we can use this voluntary aspect, it can be used to help us tackle two common emotional issues many of us have from time to time.
The first is the feeling of overwhelm, and the second is the feeling of nihilism.
The feeling of overwhelm is associated with a sense of seriousness, importance, fear, high emotions, and the inability to cope with the current stressors.
Nihilism is the sense that life has no meaning, and on a personal level, tends to lead to feelings of pessimism, lack of desire to take action, and the sense that what you do doesn't matter.
These are two ends of a spectrum, the middle of which would be made up of a variation on how seriously you take yourself and the world.
The extent to which these emotions are under voluntary control is consistently debated within psychology, and it may be different based on each person.
For example, people with clinical depression may have less voluntary control over their emotions and actions due to biological reasons, leading to a vicious circle, keeping those people stuck.
For the rest of us, we have at least some voluntary control, and we can use this in two contrasting ways in the cases of overwhelm and nihilism.
The feeling of overwhelm can often lead to inaction due to fear, based on how much importance you've placed on what's going on. In this case, it can be useful to look at the big picture, and zoom out, to the point where you no longer feel that what you're doing right now is the most important thing in the world, allowing you to act, rather than staying stuck out of fear.
"Zooming out" could mean reminding yourself of the number of people in the world, the size of the world in our solar system, the fact that there are millions of solar systems out there, and so on, which can give you that perspective of the relative smallness of your problems.
Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" video is an excellent simulation of this.
For people who already feel like their effect on the world is pointlessly small, this same advice could send them down an even darker road.
For those people, it would be a better idea to find ways to remind yourself that what you do actually does matter. That might be by reminding yourself that your actions not only affect you, but also those around you, both directly, and by the example you show to those around you. Thinking of yourself as one node in a network of all the people in the world can be a useful way of thinking about this.
Jordan Peterson said, "You’re a node in a network. You’ll know 1,000 people in your life, and they’ll know 1,000 people in their life. That’s 1 person away from 1 million. That’s 2 persons away from 1 billion. You’re connected more than you think. The things you do and don’t do matter more than you think."
The reality of a given situation could require you to tell yourself a different story based on what you need at that moment.
Whatever voluntary control you have over that can be used to your advantage, in the situations of overwhelm and nihilism, as well as other areas, but we must also be careful that we're not lying to ourselves and shirking responsibility by using it in the wrong contexts.