I listened to a woman complaining about her hardship in taking care of her disabled husband. Their lives changed completely in a car accident that took place almost ten years after their marriage and made her husband bedridden. Since then, the wife has bathed him, dressed him, fed him, taken him to the hospital for consultations, and helped him in the wheelchair, for the past five years and now she had started to feel weak and distressed.

She confessed to me that she is tired of this situation. So, I suggested to her: Why don’t you turn this crisis into an opportunity and change your perspective of it? She said: How is that? I said: Do you have a wish in your life that you did not fulfil? She said: Yes, I want to complete my higher studies and obtain a Master’s degree in humanities. I told her: How about taking a Master’s degree on the type of disability that your husband suffers from? She gaped in astonishment! I continued: Don’t be surprised, you have practical experience in dealing with this illness but simply lack the scientific experience. She smiled and said: Oh my god! What a wonderful idea. Then she started conducting the journey of her life and completed a PG specialising in her husband’s disability and started taking care of him in the best scientific way possible, and after a few years, she opened a consulting office and started giving lectures on skills required for dealing with people with special needs.

Changing the perspective is the best way to transform our feelings from sadness to happiness, from fatigue to pleasure, and from anger to contentment. Therefore, when a person comes across a crisis, the first step he needs to take is to change his perspective and see the gains of his sufferings, so that he turns the ordeal into a blessing or a fortune.

I remember using this same technique with a man who came to me complaining about his wife’s anger and nervousness. I asked him: Do you think there is any gain from that? He remained silent for a while, then thoughtfully, he said: I don’t think so, because this nervousness irritates me a lot. So I said: Tell me about yourself. Which one of you is the impatient one and who is the patient person? He said frankly: I am an impatient person and because of my rush, I make a lot of mistakes, and I wish I had learned patience. So I suggested to him: So, why don’t you consider your wife’s problem as an opportunity for you to get used to patience as you are already trying to treat and change it? He looked at me surprised and said: It is a wonderful idea to take advantage of her nervousness in training myself. I added: Thus, change your perspective and you will be happy while trying to change it, be patient in training yourself, so you will hit two birds with one stone.

A woman in my acquaintance: Allah tested her with a husband addicted to drugs. She read books, attended courses and communicated with specialists until she was able to deal with him and became better than the treating doctors. She was the reason for her addicted husband’s repentance, then she turned her efforts into making a charitable project to serve those who were afflicted with the same affliction as her. She was discontent for ten years because of the hardships, but when she changed her viewpoint, that hardship became a reason for establishing her charitable project.

This method is not developed by me, but rather, Islam recommends it. When we lose a loved one, we say: “We belong to God and to Him, we shall return.” In this case, we change our viewpoint from focusing on the loss to the insight that we all shall return to God, and those whom we lost have preceded us. We have transferred feelings from individuals to the collective, as we contemplate the famous saying “Whoever sees the misfortune of others, his misfortune will be lost for him”. Changing the perspective helps in gaining comfort, happiness and relief of the soul.

I remember conversing about this concept with a man I met on the plane. He told me a story that happened with his illiterate father, who turned from an illiterate man to an educated one by changing his viewpoint. He said: My father asked a chartered clerk to write him a letter in which he put money to send. He wanted to be reassured about what the tenant wrote, so he handed it over to another person. From here he came to know that there was a problem, so his father returned to the clerk, and instead of scolding him and demanding his money back, he thanked him and told him, “Thank you, you made me decide to learn to read and write from today onwards.” In this way, his father changed his viewpoint on the problem, And his children were affected by it, so they became lovers of reading. In this case, the father changed his angle of view towards the problem and thus, benefited from it.

This is what we call positive interaction with the problems, as I explained in the previous four instances! From today on, let us start by learning the skill of changing our perspective. Don’t hurry to be cynical, believe that whatever Allah has destined is only for the best.