Ahhh the good times! Who doesn’t want the good times to stay, but do they bring the best out of us?
Can the good times make us soft and lazy? Can they make us too comfortable, unchallenged and uninterested in testing out our full potentials? And if so, should we seek difficult times as a way to better ourselves? Or should we just beware of the comfort zone?
GOOD TIMES
We all seek happiness and contentment and learning to be happy and content is undeniably a good thing as being unhappy and living through long period of difficulties can be tough on our well-being and create stress which can lead to illness.
We want to be happy, we want to be loved, we want to be healthy and we want to feel worthy. This optimal state is a great place to be, but in large doses it can make us lazy, weak and even unprepared.
When we are fully content, we do not seek to be challenged. We are simply happy to be. We stroll, we lay under the sun and we laugh with our family and friends. Let’s not get confused, these moments during which we create happy memories are very important as they can heal our soul and nurture a safe place for us to grow, but in some cases, happiness can turn into inertia which can make us undisciplined.
Take love. When we feel loved we feel pampered but, in this state, we can start to neglect other important things, like our own needs, our job, or our family and friends and we can end up unable to see and test out our full potentials. Similarly, when we are in a happy relationship, we can end up taking things for granted. When we are healthy, instead, we can end up forgetting the benefits of keeping fit and having a healthy diet. We are already healthy, why we should we sweat it? We can also become somewhat unsympathetic towards other people’s health issues. As for worthiness and success, it can feed our ego and make us arrogant towards other’s people personal struggles.
DIFFICULT TIMES
Despite the difficult times having a bad name, it is during the tough times that we are challenged to be our best. We put more efforts to show our loved ones how much we care for them, we become humble, proactive, disciplined and we test our worthiness.
THE COMFORT ZONE
We could say that the good times bring the worst in us while the difficult times bring the best in us, but it’s not really so and it would be unfair and short sighted to say that.
It’s the lazy comfort zones that we should beware of. Comfort zones are comfortable and that’s why it’s so difficult to move away from them. However, they are also unchallenging and in the long term they leave us with a feeling of flatness and lack of motivation.
From time to time, it is good practice to challenge ourselves both physically and mentally. It helps us expand our mind, triggers creativity, expands our horizons, helps us identify our goals, our beliefs and our priorities and it can motivate us to get rid of boredom and unhappiness. Also, with every unsuccessful change we learn something new and with that we get a sense of contentment and gratification.
THE GOOD THAT CAME OUT OF TERRIBLE HISTORICAL TIMES
Despite the negativity associated with “terrible historical times”, it’s interesting to notice that many tragically sad and difficult times have also brought forth positive results.
World War I (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918) lead to women gain the right to vote. When the war began, men were forced to leave their jobs and head to the front line. It was the women, who normally lived a life of domestication, who started to replace men even in the industry job (previously considered manly positions) and begun fending for their families. Women proved they could be equal to men and in so doing, through the suffragette movement, they earned their right to vote in 1920, just two years after the war ended.
Another great example of how hard and disastrous times can bring some positive outcomes can be seen with the Beveridge Report which challenged assumptions about how things worked. It was at the darkest hour of World War II, in late 1942, that the UK published the Beveridge Report that led to the revolution called the welfare state addressing issues such as disease, ignorance and squalor.
The death of 17 years old Trayvon Martin, who was attacked and fatally shot by his 28 years old neighbour George Zimmerman, as he walked home after a trip to a convenience store in Sanford, Florida back in 2013, lead to the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Originally, Zimmerman was not charged by Sanford Police for the shooting of the unarmed black teen, but after the public protested, he was charged with second degree murder and manslaughter. However, only to be acquitted of all charges a few months later. People were appalled by the verdict and it was then that Black Lives Matter became a national movement as a form of protest against racism towards black people.
Fast forward to 2020 and we have the Covid-19 pandemic. As people started to feel their vulnerability, a new community spirit begun to sprout. Neighbours got together to help the ones in need and sing-a-long-a-lockdown formed to light up the spirits. Remote working made people question the current way of working and families got to spend more quality times together. Key workers became the new heroes and the importance of care workers underwent a massive re-evaluation. Pollution went down, making the world reflect on how costly the daily human life is to the health of our planet. Wet markets, thought to be responsible for the spread of the COVID-19 virus, forced the world to shed light on the failed standard of cleanliness and on the brutality of what goes on in those markets, and as a result many have been closed. Alongside this, people started to stand up for what’s right and fair. The recent Black Lives Matter demonstrations are just an example. Finally, this virus, also brough talks about the importance of a healthy immune system and the importance of a healthy diet mostly plant based.
CLEARING THE NAME OF DIFFICULT TIMES
The secret, and unfortunately there is no easy formula, is to try and live through the good times with the same values, strive and humbleness that you would have through the bad times. Use the bad times to prepare for the good times. Dedicate time to your loved ones, appreciate what you have, don’t take them for granted, live in the moment and practice-practice-practice living in the good times as if you lived in the bad times.
We can do this by working on our core beliefs and by building a solid and positive mindset. Our happiness comes within ourselves. If you can do that, then even in the difficult times you can be better!
