We had quite an exciting night last night as the house of the friend where we stayed to be able to attend the funeral of the mother of another friend was robbed. And it was a very strange robbery where nothing seems to add up. As somehow there was too much coincidence like a large amount of money hidden in the quarters of the friend where we stayed. And another relatively large amount hidden in another place. And not too many places searched or disturbed so much except especially the room where the money was. As also some of our stuff was searched, but not really that thorough.

And of course now, my friend in panic, emotionally disturbed has all kinds of thoughts how this could have happened and who could have done it, of course including the four of us, who stayed at her house at the time.

So with my newly learned knowledge of looking at the positive side of things the first thing I tried was to calm my friend down, which of course didn’t work, as she was just robbed and was very upset. And as the hours passed I tried to search for something positive in this, for her or for any other person. And I couldn’t really find anything as there was quite a lot of money gone, some expensive and valuable equipment and worst of all of course a feeling of betrayal as it seemed the robbery had been done by someone who knew either our friend or the apartment.

What I did see over the day was that the negative thoughts of some of the people involved in this whole thing somehow seemed to make things worse, especially for themselves. And basically I was not really involved as nothing I did or didn’t do would have made any difference, so of course for me it was relatively easy to not involve myself in the whole negative thing I saw develop, although at a certain point I also got kind of angry at all those people blaming themselves and others for what had gone wrong, where to me in the end this was nothing more than some kind of burglary with or without inside knowledge, nothing more, nothing less.

And yes, interesting to somehow be more a spectator than someone participating in all the emotions and stuff going. And the most interesting thing for me was that basically everything was based on perceptions and hardly anything on ‘reality’ as until now nobody, of course except the people involved in the robbery itself, knows what had exactly happened and why and how. And despite me as indicated not being really involved, although of course I am a suspect as I was staying in the house when my friend was not there, I think with my recently learned skills of being more, well, disciplined, and more observant, more analysing what was going on and what I could learn from it, I think I did pretty well in handling this situation, where I saw almost everybody else somehow being drawn into this drama, a drama that was just created around perceptions around the actual event.

So I saw a lot of negative thoughts and feelings mainly backfiring to the people having them. Where to me in the end this was just a simple burglary where someone must have entered the house, took some stuff and then left the house. Nothing more, nothing less. But what was the worst around these feelings based on perceptions of the persons themselves or based on the perceptions of others were doing an awful lot of damage to some relationships, either developing or already existing for a long time.

So maybe the positive of all of this, at least for me, is to learn how dangerous perceptions are and how damaging actions based on those perceptions can be. And yes, I know I was not the person having been robbed and also not the person who might have made a mistake, so it is relatively easy for me to stay calm. But somehow I know that with my current knowledge and discipline and such I think I would have reacted much calmer and dealt with it much easier than the person involved.

So what stays in my thoughts related to the Principles of Success is to do things based on facts and not based on presumptions. So whatever happens, first analyse and figure out what is really going on, and then act.

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