I will go on to make a second point which will, at first blush, sound uncaring and rough but think it through with me,..
The second stage of this realization, the awareness, is that "this is not about me."
Rain is bad if you're having a parade or a picnic; it's good if you're a farmer. In reality, rain is just rain. It has no inherent value. "Good" and "bad" are value judgements which we place on rain, and we apply them based on how the rain affects us.
We apply those judgements even when the rain is not actually falling on us, but is falling on someone else, because we feel for those upon whom it is falling; because we have empathy for those people. But that rain doesn't make us wet, so why are we drowning? It's because we are too centered around "self."
Think, for a moment, what we are doing. We are applying our judgement to a gloabl phenomenum. One of the greatest abilities I have been given in a set of spiritual tools which I use is the ability to take myself out of the center of the universe and realize that how I feel about something doesn't matter. Rain is just rain, and I am not the arbiter of its goodness or badness. I may look at the visible effect and think that it harming someone's parade, but I am not in charge of the rain and I am not in charge of how they feel. I am still able to empathise with their loss, but their loss and their feelings about it do not harm my well being because that parade was not about me.
One of the most powerful thoughts in the world is the thought is, "this is not about me."
My wife comes home from work tired and in a bad mood. I could respond to that bad mood in kind, be in a bad mood myself and pick a fight with her; let her depression and tiredness influence me and affect the way I interact with her. Believe me, there is that inclination. But I remind myself that the "this is not about me," and I let my nice day continue on into a nice evening. Most of the time I help her as much as I help myself.
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