Recently, times have been quite rough for me. Not rough, rough, but I’ve been dealing with my fair share of irritants. I made two tradeoffs that altered my life dramatically and have been living with the short-term consequences. The hope is that these two tradeoffs will eventually pay off, and that I’ll soon have enough money to retire on, albeit rather modestly. I think it’s working, but the day to day still takes some maintenance. Here’s what I do to keep a positive mood, even when things are technically not ideal.
Stick With Supportive Family Members
The right family members are pretty much all you need in order to get through hard times. But the wrong ones will bring you and your mood down. Generally speaking, though, supportive family members are the best people to have around when times are hard. Although family members can sometimes be exhausting, they’re better than “friends”. Friends come and go, and they’re less proven than truly solid family members. That being said, I don’t advocate for staying with toxic family members. I’ve seen too many people get dragged down by the bad people around them to recommend that anybody put up with toxicity.
Vent
A lot of people don’t really express themselves. This is often seen as a good thing, but I disagree. It’s really not good or useful to keep emotions bottled up. You’re less healthy, happy, and intelligent when your wheels are spinning about other things. Just vent. If people like you less for it, then fine. It might feel like you’re gaining favor keeping these people around in the short term, but in my experience being pent up and angry is the worst. Express your frustrations. Just try not to be cruel in your criticisms of others.
Do Your Best to Stay Objective
This is actually the most important thing you can do during hard times, in my opinion. If you lose your grip on reality, you will find yourself making bad decisions. When you make bad decisions, they compound exponentially, and before long you will find yourself in a deeper hole than you could have imagined. Try to stay objective, so that you can effectively work your way out of whatever hole your in. Staying objective can be difficult depending on the environment you’re in. Most people don’t research things, and they don’t give a shit about you. You’re going to have to figure out a way to be objective (or close enough to objective) without the help of those around you. For me, this meant learning a lot about money and economics. Learning about economics taught me to focus on gaining wealth rather than increasing my income. I ironically now have the opportunity to earn a larger income than I could have imagined even a year ago. It’s been a long and hard road however, and it required that I take an objective look at my living and work situation.
Keep working hard
If you work hard, and are using objective measures of success, you’re going to be able to make progress. This obviously hinges on you being good at what you’re trying to do, and no act of God takes you down more than you already are. This doesn’t only apply during hard economic times. If you’re struggling to solve any problem, the best solution is to be persistent and consistent. Show up every day and chip away at the problem.
Enjoy yourself responsibly
When times are really, really tough, you’re likely to have moments of weakness. I wouldn’t overthink this. Life isn’t always easy, and it takes a lot of effort in order to stay completely clean and upright. If you have responsible fun, you’ll be a lot less pent up, and it’ll be easier for you to motivate yourself to do what’s necessary.
Pray to God
The best way to combat moments of weakness is to pray. It’s very strange, but when you accept Christ into your life, things just go better. This is one of the reasons why I personally didn’t continue writing erotica. I don’t really judge anyone for writing fictional pornographic works, but I don’t personally believe that it makes sense to be writing that stuff. I think praying to God will help any thinking person to do better in life. If you’re logical and praying to God, doing immoral things isn’t ideal. I’m not a huge fan of written erotica, so I stopped writing it. Whether or not you come to similar conclusions is up to you, but regardless I think praying to God works.
Overall, you need to stay positive, because it’s the only option. It’s actually easy to stay positive when you make life about meaning rather than happiness. When you chase happiness, it gets easy to fall into hedonism and degeneracy. When you find meaning, you can motivate yourself to do anything.
Thanks for paying attention.
