> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.gilespcroft.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# It's not what happens, it's how you feel about it.
- URL: https://www.gilespcroft.com/what-happens-how-you-feel/
- Published: 2025-11-15T07:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-06-11T18:05:44.000Z
- Description: The one simple distinction that, when truly seen, will change your life forever 🤩
- Author: Giles P Croft
- Tags: Thought realisation, Medicine, Psychology, Real stories, MECHANICS

> *“Just wanted to say in my opinion this has to be one of your best, if not your absolute best, emails.”* \~ Paul G.

A genuine little reminder for you today, because it’s so easy to forget:

💡

****It’s not what happens, it’s how you feel about it.**

So obvious, and yet so easily overlooked.

Taken to the extreme, the most “terrible” thing could happen to you… and yet you could be completely fine with it.

I’m not saying you *will* be—our conditioned responses can be pretty sticky!—I’m just pointing you to the fact that these two things, below, are not the same!

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/9b/f3/9bf3d316-7d32-494b-814f-a7d94d6358c3/content/images/2025/11/Flip-chart---The-thing-vs-Your-experience.jpeg)

**If you’ve ever been on one of my courses, or had 1:1 coaching with me, you’ll probably recognise this 💝*

And I have drawn two distinct lines, with a gap between them, for very good reason.

👨🏻‍🏫

## Dark times

Years ago, back when I was on my way out the door from Clinical Surgery, I’d quit my training post and was amassing as much money as I could (before becoming technically unemployed) by doing various locum surgical jobs.

This meant travelling to all sorts of hospitals I’d never worked in before and being thrown in at the deep end, plugging gaps in the rota for staff who were off sick, or on leave.

It paid really well and good job too, because I can’t recall a single shift where I wasn’t covering more than one absence. In one notable episode I turned up at the Surgical Directorate of a District General Hospital to discover I alone was scheduled to do the jobs of no less than three doctors!!

😱

(I became something of a local legend, that week. The overwhelming majority of ward staff took pity on me, and went out of their way to avoid bleeping me, unless it was absolutely necessary.)

But being on call overnight, in an unfamiliar hospital, with unfamiliar staff and unfamiliar patients really was the pits.

It sucked big time.

You’d be *utterly* shattered… get back to your room, just about get to sleep and then be woken up again by any number of different wards. I didn’t really have much of a sense of humour on such nights, and came close to crying a few times.

Until I caught sight of something in the diagram, above; some truth.

This was decades before I came across the [*inside-out understanding*](https://www.gilespcroft.com/inside-out/) but intuitively I knew that if I was going to get through these irredeemably dark times (i.e. “The thing”) I would have to do something to alter how I *felt* about them (i.e. “My *experience* of The thing”).

These jobs used to get paid at an hourly rate, so whenever I’d go to a new hospital where I knew I’d be on call overnight, I’d take a little calculator with me, and any time the bleep went off and woke me up, in the time *before* I picked up the phone to answer the call, I would do a very quick calculation of how much money I had just earned for sleeping.

🤑

Such a silly little trick, but it *completely* changed my experience of “The thing” (which hadn’t changed) and I usually made those return calls with sort of mildly amused, smug satisfaction – my eyes on the prize of why I was putting myself through it in the first place, I suppose.

## Isn’t that just “reframing”?

(You say *tom-ay-toes*, I say *tom-ah-toes* 😉)

Well, kind of, but there’s something deeper at play, in seeing the difference—and, more crucially, the *disconnect*—between [**The Thing** and **Your experience of The Thing**](https://www.gilespcroft.com/the-thing-vs-your-experience-of-the-thing/).

When you’ve seen how “Your experience” is created, moment to moment, from the inside-out, it just takes the pressure off “The thing” entirely.

The two aren’t *actually* connected (even though it [*really looks like they are*](https://www.gilespcroft.com/illusion/)*)*, and you get to a point where you can see what was meant by the spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti, when he was asked what his secret was, and he replied,

> *“My secret? Oh I suppose you could say that I don’t mind what happens.”*

Have yourself a wonderful day.

💟

Giles

SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY REMINDERS newsletter 

[![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/9b/f3/9bf3d316-7d32-494b-814f-a7d94d6358c3/content/images/2025/12/DR_Lockup-Black-1.png)](#/portal/signup) 

Want to start **every* day with helpful, insightful content like this? The Daily Reminder is a quick, lighthearted email that arrives in your inbox every morning, to help keep you grounded in reality, so that you get to **‘Think less, and live more.’*

**“They feel like a moment of stillness in a world of madness.” \~* Neil, UK

**“One of those small things with big impact. Honestly, just sign up!”* \~ Paula, UK

[GET YOURS NOW ](#/portal/signup) 

### Related

[You can’t not see an illusionThe all-important difference between waking up \*from\* the dream, and \*to\* the dream 💭![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/9b/f3/9bf3d316-7d32-494b-814f-a7d94d6358c3/content/images/icon/DR_Lockup-Black-3-27.png)The Daily RemindersGiles P Croft![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/9b/f3/9bf3d316-7d32-494b-814f-a7d94d6358c3/content/images/thumbnail/photo-1697313730507-694b4385e0c3)](https://www.gilespcroft.com/illusion/)

I know, I know, it doesn't **look* this way… but maybe that's the whole point?