Life isn’t always easy. In fact, a lot of the time life is tough as hell and we tend to get frustrated with what appears to be a never-ending cycle of shitty stuff.
Let’s watch one of my favorite parts of the movie Blow.
“Sometimes you’re flush and sometimes you’re bust, and when you’re up, it’s never as good as it seems, and when you’re down, you never think you’ll be up again, but life goes on. ”
I love this quote because it’s the truth. It’s often in our toughest moments that we force ourselves to truly grow. It’s in our moments of despair that we realize our true potential and find out what we really are made of.
It always is hard when things don’t come together for us. A client decides not to pay you, your website doesn’t convert as well as you had hoped it would or an emergency happens where you need to replace something that you thought was working fine. Or in the case of the movie, you get busted for selling cocaine by an under-cover officer. (talk about hitting rock bottom)
These things happen. It’s part of life and part of life is learning to deal with these low points. I hope the whole cocaine selling thing doesn’t happen to you, but you get what I mean.
If you are in a position where it seems like everything and everyone is going against you, don’t worry. It will only be like this for a little while.
There have been many times in my life where I felt completely useless, like all the time I spent learning was irrelevant because I wasn’t being paid what I felt I deserved. There’s also been times where I was so mad at myself for not being as successful as I should be at my age. These times did improve.
I’m here to let you know that it will get better.
If life was always kick-ass and awesome, we wouldn’t be able to truly appreciate things when everything was going great. We wouldn’t have the bad times to compare with the good times so we would never know when things were really good. It would even get to the point where we might take advantage of all the good things because we thought they would never end. We would just naturally assume that was how life was. We wouldn’t get extremely excited about succeeding in something that people told us we wouldn’t ever succeed with and it wouldn’t give us a reason to want to improve.
“Money isn’t real George, it doesn’t matter, it only seems like it does.“
Sometimes we can’t help but feel sad, or angry, or depressed. Rather than fighting this, like it’s wrong and some kind of disorder you have, you need to just try to just relax into this emotion and ride it through until it’s over. It doesn’t always have to be a gut-wrenching experience. It’s actually beneficial for you to experience these extreme emotions because it shows that you are alive and feeling.
I understand that we’d all like to stay positive and happy as much as possible and I try to live my life this way. The truth is that you can’t always be in this state of super happiness. However there are certain things that you can do to increase the amount of time you spend in this state.
How does someone stay in this state of happiness?
Balance
Even if you love your work, you can’t spend your entire day working. If you love going out and partying or meeting girls, you can’t do that all day either. Although I would love to be able to do that I know my life wouldn’t be balanced.
You’ll find that if you productively do something in each of the following areas of your life, your mood, confidence, charisma and happiness will start to skyrocket:
1. Work
2. Physical (exercise, running, swimming, playing a sport)
3. Social (MeetUp.com groups, going on dates, having lunch with someone)
4. Creativity or Education (whether it’s writing, making music, cooking, programming, taking classes, or learning another language)
5. Relaxation, can be anything from reading a book to watching TV or going out in your yard and laying down to look at clouds to see which clouds look like objects.
How can you spend more time in a state of happiness?
So, your mission:
Take out a piece of paper and make a list of specific things that make you happy and balanced in each of those categories. You then make an effort to comfortably fit these activities into your schedule at least five days a week. Most of these areas don’t need to take more than half an hour each day. Chances are you’re already doing at least 2 of these things each day.
If you find that days are passing by and you’re not exercising or socializing, for example, you may need to actually write out a
daily schedule for yourself and then stick to it. This can be very difficult to do, but it will be worth it.
And, finally, if you’re one of those people who says they have no time, chances are that the problem may not be time but time
management. Start keeping track of exactly what you do each day and for how long. You can learn more about how you’re actually spending your time and then figure out ways to increase your productivity.
Actually write it down on a sheet of paper: how much time you spend eating breakfast, how much time you spend checking emails, what you’re doing with your time at work. Find out just how much time you spend in front of TV watching pointless reality TV shows. Then see where your inefficiencies are and eliminate them.