It’s 2021 Shitty things happen.
I guess that’s the only thing that never changes.
A couple of years ago I started a project of mine.
I’m gonna leave out all the details ‘cos it’s not that important.
However, this was sth that I was really into.
And (sth) I was pretty good at.
I had a good start, .. things were looking up for the first couple of years.
I had the vision.
I had the goals.
I had the..
PASSION And I garnered some extent of mild success.
I was like on cloud nine.
But as you know, good times don’t last long.
Not every day is Sunday.
And soon the balloons and confetti were gone.
It wasn’t that things were going downhill.
It was just that..
REALITY sank in.
There were many, many obstacles in the way.
And every problem solved led to yet another problem to be solved.
People raised doubts.
I had doubts.
And while I’ve never doubted the essence of the work,
I had serious doubt of whether I could really pull this off.
And it came to a point where last year I felt..
Damn it, why even bother?
Like nobody cares about this darn project but you.
You’re all left out on the shelf right here.
Just leave it.
Just get on back to your own life.
There’s plenty of other stuff to do.
But knowing this was the RIGHT THING to do, having those denial thoughts
kind of added on to my feeling of feeling guilty.
And I plunged into a stage of discouragement.
I just lost the mojo.
And even though I never really stopped doing what I do,
I knew deep down inside.. that I just wasn’t the same person as when
I started off as.
I had a hard time getting my act together.
I would be laying in bed.. wide awake all night.
And in the morning, I would feel so reluctant to get out of bed,
Not because I didn’t get much sleep, but because I had no clue at all on how to
keep things goin’.
I would be sitting in front of my laptop for hours and hours..
coming up with zero ideas.
Or maybe I should say, “zero FEASIBLE ideas”.
‘Cos I was coming up with pretty many..
BAD ideas.
And for the last month or two, I just completely stopped doing my daily research—
sth that I’ve been doing for years.
It all just felt wrong.
I just felt completely flat.
And this went on for quite a while.
Until..
Yes, there’s always an ‘UNTIL’, or else there wouldn’t be a story.
Until one day I got this email.
It wasn’t another business collaboration inquiry,
like I usually get in my mailbox.
To my surprise, this was from the CEO/Founder of an NPO
that I’ve been in touch with a couple years ago.
And he just simply wrote to say, “Hello, I remember you.
I’ve been following your work for a while.”
“Just writing to let you know that I appreciate what you’re doing,”
“and I hope you keep up the good work.”
That was it.
But to me, that was like a shot in the arm.
Maybe a shot in the butt.
Like, wow!
I didn’t know someone out there really knew about this project
and even cared enough to write me an email.
The funny thing was— If I had known this all along,
I probably wouldn’t have slacked off and lost heart in the first place.
And thinking back on how it was like the wind was taken out of my sails
just because I thought I was getting nowhere.
I felt STUPID.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
A lot of times, in life, we feel set back, we feel depressed
because things aren’t going our way.
Or we’re not getting enough attention or credit that we think we should have.
And we let the circumstances, either external or internal,
get to us.
Like in my case, when I got that email, I finally came to realize..
what a dumbass am I!
‘Dumbass’ is not a bad word, right?
Anyways, how dumb I was for being like that.
Like all of that was so unnecessary.
I got beaten by myself.
I got beaten by my own doubts.
I got beaten by my own negative emotions.
What a dumbo!
You see, in most life scenarios, we have a very shallow perspective of the
future and the current surroundings.
It’s not easy to feel the impact or meaning of what we do,
or even down to the core, the very value of our own existence in this
life, especially in difficult times.
And thus we ponder, we wonder,
we grow tired and we lose faith.
But approaching this ambiguity in life with a different attitude
could bring forth a very different result.
And by this I am talking about..
SHOWING GRATITUDE
It’s one of the hardest things to do, to be grateful in the hardest of hard times.
But if you think about it, there’s always something to be thankful
about.
And when you carry that mindset with you, it’s like a huge magnet
sucking in every thing positive towards you.
And on that premise, when things come out good for you,
you feel even more deserving.
‘Cos all you’ve been sending out was nothing but good vibes during the wait,
throughout the struggle; compared to being bitter,
compared to being a complainer which might make you feel a little bit guilty
or a little bit ashamed of yourself when things start to look up.
Needless to say, those negative thoughts can really take a
toll on you.
It’s always about the positive mindset.
It’s not forced positivity.
It’s being practical, knowing your situation and finding the good
out of it.
And focusing on those instead of the bad.
That’ll make a huge difference in both the end result and the process.
It’s okay to feel discouraged.
Discouragement is a feeling.
What matters is how you deal with it.
It’s more than natural to feel discouraged when you’re in your lows.
But finding the good out of the bad in your low days
and leveraging that so that you can possess a positive attitude to cope with it
makes a significant difference in both the outcome and the process.
And I wish you the best in everything in your life.
Peace