Some people in this world are optimistic type. They enjoy every day of their lives and believe that a better future is waiting for them.
Some people in the world are pessimistic type. They spend most of their days suffering internally. They hope to avoid the bad days in the future.
It doesn't matter if you are optimistic or pessimistic. It will be over one day.
All your worries and stress about work will be over soon.
If you can comprehend how short amount of time you have to live, everything is different thereafter.
Whenever I am on vacation, I sit in front of the ocean and watch the sunset.
While watching the sunset, I get this sinking feeling. Time is running out of my hands. Another day has passed. Have I enjoyed today?
Once the sun is gone out of sight, darkness is both out there and inside me.
Imagine when you are old and weak, and feel like you have wasted all your life.
Imagine being alive for 60-70 years and still not doing something valuable! How would that feel?
Life isn't tiny. We waste a lot of it.
Theoretically, every day could be a new start if you want.
Every day could be a new opportunity.
Each day, we get 86,400 seconds to live. Every moment we waste worrying about the future or regretting the past, we lose bits of those 86,400 seconds.
Before we realize it, another day is gone.
Days will turn into weeks. Weeks will turn into months.
Years later, you will think, where has all that time gone?
I am 28 years old. This year, I will turn 29. I have spent the last 4-5 years drifting, with no actual purpose.
Even now, I spend plenty of time thinking about everything I should have done differently in my life.
I could have done a lot more if I had lived purposefully. If I could have pulled myself to the present moment intentionally.
Steve Jobs used to ask himself daily, "If today was the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?".
If the answer was "No" for too many days in a row, he had to change something.
Steve Jobs was able to focus on the present moment without worrying too much about the past or future. Maybe that's why he was able to achieve incredible things and live a spectacular life.
Time and energy are relative to what you are doing.
You realize how slowly time passes when you have to wait, say in a hospital waiting room. Five minutes feels like five hours. Time isn't moving. It stops.
When I was in college, the boring lectures felt like they were going on for 3-4 hours, but they were just for 45 mins.
However, when I was doing something I enjoyed, like playing video games or watching a Netflix series, a couple of hours felt like a few minutes.
Time and energy are relative to what you are doing. If you enjoy the activity, you will have enough fuel to do it.
Hours will feel like minutes. But if you don't enjoy what you are doing, minutes will be tough to pass. You will feel sluggish.
Invest your time and energy consciously because you have a limited amount of it.
Seneca once said, "It is not that we have a short time to live, but we waste a lot of it."
A rich person can figure out 100 ways to make money because he knows where to invest his time and money.
However, if a poor person is given a considerable amount of money, he won't know where to invest it.
Maybe that's why most lottery winners end up at the same place after wasting their winnings.
Maybe that's why most people who earn enormous money during crypto bull runs lose their money because they constantly make bad trades. They don't know how to preserve their cash.
Similarly, if you don't know how to invest your time, you will waste most of your life.
For example, when you spend 10 hours working, you pay with your time to make money.
You can spend those 10 hours working for a paycheck or you can work with passion and learn something new.
If you work like this, you won't feel like you have wasted 10 hours of your day for a small amount of money.
Similarly, you can look at the time you spend differently.
Like when you spend hours with your loved ones, it is an investment — to strengthen your relationship.
When you spend your time playing video games, it is an opportunity to be lost in another world for a few hours, away from your worries.
Make A Simple Habit Of Showing Up Daily
In 2019 and a few months of 2020, I wrote about one article daily, putting my thoughts here.
Every day, I would work on my thought process to improve it.
And I felt like I was improving a lot, just because I was showing up daily.
The feeling of being disciplined to show up to do your work daily is tremendous.
However, in 2021 and parts of 2022, I got busy with my personal life. I felt too exhausted to show up here.
You can't change your past. You can plan and strategize all you want about your future, but most future events are random.
However, you can always show up today. You can achieve a little bit today.
It's only a matter of time before everything will eventually improve.
When coronavirus hit the world, most people felt that things won't go back to the usual way, but everything did.
Whenever crypto markets take a nosedive, most people feel it's better to sell everything, quit this space and never look back. However, those who stick will make huge profits eventually.
Everything happens in cycles. Sometimes you make a profit from your investments. Sometimes you lose.
The idea is to keep yourself in motion when things don't work out for you — keep showing up.
If you show up daily, you will be ready when you see an opportunity. However, if you don't show up, you will avoid opportunities because you never feel ready.
Once I stopped writing, it took months before I could get back to my process of writing regularly. On the other hand, people who show up daily improve their skills significantly.
When you show up daily, you will get creative, and eventually, you will do creative things.
Time is always running out of your hands. No matter how much you want to control it.
Change your approach — if things don't work out for you. Try a different approach.
You have a short and finite time. Learn to show up daily with all your fuel.
When you run into hardships, it counts to show up daily.