You Will Always Have Problems: A Hard Fact of Life
I remember when I was 22, leaving Canada, I had so much certainty about the future and that it would definitely be bright. And I had an infinite amount of opportunities. I just had to go out and get it. I will have to say I was lucky to be a kid going out to the world at the peak of globalization.
However, I think like many young people, I made the mistake of attaching happiness to “when.”
In our materialistic and goal driven world it’s easy to internalize these scripts. “When I get that job, I will be successful. When I get married I will be happy. When I make a million dollars everything will be okay.”
When you are young and even when you are old, you think that life gets easier. That by the time you are 30 or 40 or even 50 that you will have figured it out.
Well now past 50, I can report back. It never gets easier and I don’t think you ever have it figured out. Life is complicated and situations change rapidly. I spent most of my 20s and 30s with the assurance that my home and family were secure, being fully focused on my career and on making money. I took them for granted. And the irony is that once I figured out the money and career stuff, my family stuff was broken.
I lived the Navalism: “‘Money will solve your money problems” but not your other arguably more important problems. I know many other much more successful individuals who suffer the same situation. Or maybe even worse, have all the material things in the world but no health. Or no health or love in their life. Self inflicted too.
There will always be problems in your life. There will always be difficulties. Everyone has them. It's a universal trait of Human life. In this century or the last one. Whether you are rich or poor. And especially if you are trying to accomplish anything at all.
But we are wired for challenges. It’s just how we perceive them. Are they insurmountable? Do we believe it’s supposed to be easy? Is it worth trying to figure out and work out?
It’s how you attack them. Do you just whine and suffer? I do this a bit sometimes as it’s easy to get down. But then I just get back up and get going again. I consistently work on myself and do what is needed. The hard things that are good for me.
Knowing that I follow the Seinfeld Strategy, James Clear does a good job describing it here: https://jamesclear.com/stop-procrastinating-seinfeld-strategy. I have a “to do list” of things in all aspects of my life: business, family, health, learning/knowledge and tick it off on the calendar (or I use Upcoach.com which is really good) and make a chain. I do it everyday and I don’t break the chain. That’s it. I focus on the process and less on the outcome. I have faith that the situation will get better. I have to have faith, otherwise what’s the point?
The easy life is a dangerous illusion and what gets most of us people in trouble. There is no easy life and we should be grateful, as otherwise we will never grow in life.