It is rare for life to line up. By that I mean that it is rare that all the things that matter to you are good, no area of your life is effected by negative energy or proving hard.
I find it rare, you dear reader may disagree and it you do then I’m happy for you that your life lines up nicely.
This period of my life is definitely not lining up.
I have, on one hand, a superb new job with Frogtrade and I’m developing my professional skills in a new direction and making excellent friends in the process, Matt Charlton for one amongst the many. My kids are both doing well, they’ve got good friends and their studies are going to plan. My mental health is in the best shape it’s been in years and I’m making the progress I want with my weight and my cardio-vascular health.
On the other hand my soulmate, my beautiful wife, is going through hell and nothing I can do can really change things for her.
I’m in that frustrating position of only being able to be here, supporting her.
This got me thinking. What do you do when life it like this?
Do you allow the frustration created by it to prevent you from enjoying the good?
Should you turn you back on the good and focus all your efforts on improving the not-so-good?
Or do you enjoy the good, embracing it fully, whilst still doing your best to alter the not-so-good?
Now all three seem to have their merits when initially considered but only one is a workable way forward.
Why do I say this? Well here’s how I see it (and I’m basing this on experience not pure conjecture).
The first option may quash misplaced feelings of guilt that can arise from feeling good when things may not actually be so good, but this approach will eventually leave you regretting not enjoying the good things that have passed you by whilst you were dwelling on the bad whilst actually achieving nothing in reality.
The second option can seem proactive. It can feel like the right thing to do because you are engaging your problems head on and “doing something about them”. This is fine in the very short term, in fact from time to time it is something that must be done by most people to help keep things in check and to stop certain bad things from getting worse. But as a long term strategy it can become so all consuming that soon all you have is the bad, having neglected the good. To resentment and loathing that path does lead.
The third option is the healthiest one I have found.
It allows you to balance the bad (no matter how grim that thing may be) with the good, often leading you to realise that there is more good in your life than there is bad. This option is not, be a long way, ignoring your problems and your tribulations. In fact this option encourages you to face them, tackle them and do all you can to defeat them. But it also allows you to enjoy the good things in your life despite of the bad things. It enables the maintainence of a positive mind despite of the circumstances you may currently find yourself in.
So there you go, that’s what I think. That’s why, despite some of the crap going on in my life at this moment in time, I can still enjoy the good things, still have a laugh, light hearted conversations and keep a positive mindset (ok, maybe not all the time but most of it).
RTFO
\m/
