During my days in the army, we had this survival camp called SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape). We slept fully outdoors, in an emergency shelter made of twigs and sticks. On the last day, we woke up at 4 a.m. when our trainers started shooting in the air with their rifles, and we had to escape quickly. We ended up skiing for 10 hours to the final extraction point.

The weather for skiing was awful: 2 degrees Celsius, raining, and 40 centimeters of snow. With that weather, skiing was very hard, sometimes almost impossible.

In the debrief, which we always had after an operation, someone mentioned that they got messed up because of the weather. Our commander took a deep breath, was silent for ten seconds, and what he said next changed something in me.

He said: “The weather was absolutely terrible for skiing, you’re right. But there wasn’t an option. There was almost half a meter of snow, so you couldn’t walk; you had to ski. We are an army unit, and we were being hunted by the enemy. Do you think it was easy for them if it wasn’t easy for you? Will the enemy’s army have brand new skis, making skiing easy? I can tell you, they don’t. Or if it’s raining, will it be easy to use drones or other small planes, not to mention jets? No, it is not. So why are you complaining about a small thing you can’t control? The only thing we can affect and control is our mindset. So control it. Use it wisely. If you are having a hard time, the enemy will be having a hard time too. So what makes the difference? It is the mindset. You can choose to have better conditions through your mind. That is the slight difference between winners and losers.”

And that clicked for me. I thought to myself that it made so much sense. The winners in life have an optimistic and open mind, looking at the best parts even when things get tough. They choose to take control of the situation through the right mindset. And that is so important in life. I call this the mindset difference.

So in life, when things you can’t control make something harder and tougher, take a step back and think. Ask yourself, how is this affecting others? Can I control the situation? How can I use this situation to my advantage? Others will start to complain about the situation, curse, and after that, everything will be incredibly hard. So choose not to. Choose to be an optimist. Choose to have a different mindset. Because you can.

Perspective = the power to obtain mental autonomy. Recognize that not all hard things are “bad things” in life. They are opportunities to grow.

Think about your Mondays. How many of us say that Mondays suck? Well, do they actually? I simply believe that your Mondays suck for two reasons: A) you suck or B) you let them suck because everyone else thinks they suck.