Tag: challenges

Be Bold and Take Chances in Life

“Nothing will ever be given to you on a plate whether that’s a new job, a pay raise, acceptance to your preferred college, or achieving a new professional certificate. You have more say over your life than you think with the effort you put into it.”

I want everyone reading this article to succeed in life. I want you to make good choices and not be to rash in your decision making as well. However, to foster new opportunities, you have to take the initiative, be bold, and take chances to really get ahead in this world. Nothing will ever be given to you on a plate whether that’s a new job, a pay raise, acceptance to your preferred college, or achieving a new professional certificate. You have more say over your life than you think with the effort you put into it.

Nowadays, you can’t be too complacent especially with the pace at which we are going through life. Time speeds up the older you get, and you have to make the most with the time given to you. You must be bold, take some chances, and see if it pays off. You don’t want to go all-in per say and take too much risk on to achieve a goal, but you also don’t want to never try at all so be sure to balance your desire to take chances with your need to preserve your livelihood. Going all-in without doing your research, not knowing your limits, or being unprepared is a recipe for disaster and that is the opposite of being bold, it is being foolhardy instead.

Calculated risk-taking is what you should be striving for in your life and to prepare yourself to succeed in whatever you choose to pursue to give yourself the best shot at success. Being bold is not about going all-in with no resources or preparation but it’s rather about taking a shot where you feel as if you have a realistic chance of succeeding. You should always think about what I am getting out of this pursuit, is it worth the risk, and what happens if I succeed or fail? You want to make sure that you can bounce back if it doesn’t turn out well and you still have the means to try again.

To cite a personal example from my own life, I prepared myself for the project management professional (PMP) certification for months, took multiple preparatory exams, enrolled in an intensive course, and took evenings and weekends to study the exam material. It was a good strategy because I didn’t go all-in without preparing myself first and reminding myself that if I fail, it’s not the end of the world and I can try again.

I also thought if it was worth the investment and if passing the exam and getting certified would benefit me in my own professional pursuits. I did the analysis before spending the money and the time to get ready for the certification exam and to go through the steps also to qualify to sit for the exam. Was it easy? No, not at all, but I’m glad I took the time to take and pass the exam because I knew that this kind of chance was worth it and would benefit me in the long run.

You will find that to be bold in life, you may have to suffer to achieve or do something truly great. Whether that is starting your first business, applying for that dream job, moving to a new city, or just asking that girl or guy out who you’ve been meaning to talk to but haven’t yet. Doing anything worthwhile in life is far from easy and often will be painful and difficult. However, the alternative of doing nothing, never trying at anything you want to do, and going through your life thinking of ‘what if?’ is no way to live your life.

I am so adamant about this topic because I’ve been through a lot of these situations I’m describing, and it required a lot of boldness to do it. You have to be bold often to get what you want out of life, especially since nothing is going to be handed to you. Make sure you take measured risks and think before you take upon a challenge as well. Boldness isn’t thoughtlessness or recklessness. Rather, it’s about thinking about what challenges you wish to take on, being realistic about your success chances, and coming up with a plan to give yourself the best shot at being successful.

Whatever dreams, goals, or ambitions you currently have, think about what it would take to make them a reality. Come up with a few steps on how to achieve your goal(s), eventually formulate a plan with further details, and then execute to the best of your ability. Sometimes, your bold decisions will be more instantaneous such as networking on the fly, asking someone out by introducing yourself and being vulnerable, or pitching your supervisor at your job about why you deserve that promotion in a one-on-one conversation.

It’s better to look back on your life and think of ‘how it happened’ rather than ‘why didn’t it happen?’ You want to live life with fewer regrets as you get older and avoid ‘what if?’ in your thoughts as much as possible. That is why I stress to you about the importance of being bold, taking an action, and working hard on what you really want out of life. If you fail, at least you gave it the best effort that you could, and the next time you try, it will be less painful, you’ll have more confidence and you’ll likely have a better chance of success the more times you take the initiative. Good luck and remember to be bold!

How to Evaluate Your Year

“Evaluating the year that has passed can be a valuable exercise for yourself to gain deeper insights, identify growth opportunities for the new year, and celebrate the accomplishments or successes you had.”

2024 is ending soon as I write this article and I do believe it is important to look back on the year that was to evaluate it holistically, such as whether it was good, bad, or a mixed bag. Evaluating the year that has passed can be a valuable exercise for yourself to gain deeper insights, identify growth opportunities for the new year, and celebrate the accomplishments or successes you had.

Reflecting on various aspects of your life, even areas that you can improve upon will help you to set meaningful goals for the year ahead. Here’s a guide I have created on how to evaluate your year comprehensively, focusing on the five major areas of friends, family, relationships, experiences, and work or business.

Friends

Friendships are an essential part of life and key to one’s mental health as a surefire way to stay truly connected and bond over shared activities or hobbies or even lend each other a helping hand. Think about reflecting on your relationships with friends from over the past year. Ask yourself the following questions when doing so:

  1. Giving or Getting Support: Were your friends there for you during challenging times? Were you there for them when they needed you when they were in a rut or needed help? Did they offer emotional or practical support when needed? Could you say the same?
  2. Showing Mutual Effort: Did you invest some effort into maintaining these friendships? Conversely, did your friends reciprocate to make the effort to reach out to you as well?
  3. Quality over Quantity: Did you prioritize meaningful, deep connections over superficial ones with your friends? Were your interactions enriching and positive with your friends?
  4. Encouraging Growth: Did your friendships encourage personal growth or help you broaden your perspective? Did you give each other advice on how to better yourselves?

Document the moments and memories that stood out to you, whether they were fun gatherings, heart-to-heart conversations, or instances where you and your friends supported each other through a difficult time. Evaluate if there were any friendships that became draining or unbalanced and consider whether to address these issues or set boundaries or even cut off the friendship if it isn’t working out.

Family

Family relationships can greatly influence your emotional well-being in both positive but also negative ways depending on your own situation with your family members. I encourage you to reflect on the past year’s interactions with your family members and consider these questions:

  1. Building Connection: Did you spend enough quality time with your family? Were you present and engaged during these moments or were you distracted by your phone or another device?
  2. Conflict Resolution: Were there any unresolved conflicts? How well did you communicate and handle disagreements? Why did those conflicts arise and how can they be avoided next year?
  3. Support System: Did your family serve as a source of strength or encouragement? Were you able to offer the same in return? Did you help each other out in a mutual manner?
  4. Milestones and Memories: Were there any significant events or milestones within your family? How did you contribute to these moments? Did they celebrate your wins this year and did you do the same for them when they had successes?

Think about whether you balanced your time and energy across the various family member dynamics that are constantly evolving each year along with the different personalities that you have in your family. Identify some ways to strengthen bonds with family members next year who may need more of your attention or love than you were able to give up until this point.

Relationships

If you’re in a romantic relationship currently, evaluating this aspect of your life is crucial to keeping it on the right track into next year. Even if you’re single, reflecting on your relationship with yourself or any potential romantic connections is just as important. Ask yourself these questions as you close out the year:

  1. Compatibility: Are you and your partner aligned in your values, goals, and vision for the future? Have you talked about how you felt about the relationships enough in terms of how it is going?
  2. Communication: How effectively did you communicate this year? Were you able to express your needs and listen to your partner’s? Did you handle disagreements respectfully and come to a positive resolution with each other?
  3. Growth: Did your relationship encourage mutual growth? Did you feel supported and loved? Did they support you when you needed it, and have you done the same for them?
  4. Quality Time: How much time did you spend together? Were those moments meaningful and fulfilling? Were you also able to spend time apart in a healthy manner?
  5. Self-Reflection: If you’re single, consider how you’ve nurtured your relationship with yourself. Did you take time to understand your needs, desires, and goals in a potential relationship for next year?

Identify areas where you’ve grown together as a couple or individually when you two were apart. If there were challenges this year, consider how you’ll address them moving forward in your relationship.

Experiences (Travel, Hobbies, Interests, Fun Activities)

Reflect on how you spent your free time outside of work, school, or business and how engaged with life outside of your daily obligations and weekly chores you were. Think about where you went, what you did, what you learned, and how much you enjoyed life beyond the office or the shop or the factory floor. Consider the following in your assessment of your experiences:

  1. Local and International Travel: Did you explore new places, whether locally or internationally? How did these experiences broaden your perspective? What did you learn from the places you traveled to? Would you travel in 2025 and how did you grow as a person in your travels?
  2. Hobbies and Interests: Did you pursue activities that bring you joy or help you grow? Did you try something new? Were you committed to these hobbies and spend enough time on them? What new hobby or interest would you like to try in the new year?
  3. Having Fun and Relaxation: Did you allocate time for leisure and enjoyment? Were you able to strike a balance between work and play? How often were you able to relax yourself?
  4. Making Memories: What were the highlights of your year? Did you attend events, celebrate milestones, or create special moments? Who did you share those memories with?

Take note of the activities, hobbies, interests, etc. that brought you the most happiness and fulfillment. If your year felt monotonous and a bit too routine, think about incorporating more variety or adventure into your life next year. Plan the destinations, places, or cities with regards to travel ahead of time that you hope to visit in the new year.

Work or Business

Your professional or business life is another crucial area to evaluate at the end of any year as it makes up about 80% of our time throughout the year. Reflect on your career or business journey over the past year by asking yourself these questions:

  1. Major Accomplishments: What were your major achievements? Did you meet or exceed your professional goals? What was the process you used to achieve your goals?
  2. Overcoming Challenges: What obstacles did you face, and how did you overcome them? Were there any failures, and what lessons did you learn from them? Who helped you overcome these challenges in your professional or business pursuits?
  3. Professional Growth: Did you acquire new skills, take on new responsibilities, or achieve personal growth in your role? How will these new skills help you next year and beyond?
  4. Managing Work-Life Balance: Were you able to maintain a healthy boundary between work and personal life? Did work leave you feeling fulfilled or drained? Did you take enough time off for vacation or for staying healthy? How did you spend your time outside of work or business?
  5. Establishing Future Goals: Are you satisfied with your current trajectory, or do you feel the need for a change? Did you take steps toward your long-term career aspirations? Will you find a new job next year? Do you plan to launch a new business or company? Will you ask for a raise or promotion and how will you ask this question to your supervisor?

Reflect on whether your work or business aligns with your personal values and passions. If there are gaps in that assessment, start thinking about how to address them in the coming year with regards to making your work or business more personally fulfilling Once you’ve reviewed these areas and answered as many questions in these five major areas as possible, combine your thoughts to identify patterns, strengths, and areas for improvement.

Lastly, think about the following ways generally on how you could make next year the best one yet:

  1. Showing Your Gratitude: What are you most grateful for this year? Acknowledge the people and experiences that enriched your life and made it the year that it was.
  2. Compile Lessons Learned: What did the failures, challenges, and successes of this year teach you? How will these lessons shape your approach to the new year and beyond?
  3. Having Goals for Improvement: What areas need more focus or change from you? How will you set realistic and actionable goals to address these aspects next year?

Evaluating your year holistically gives you a clearer perspective on where you stand in your life and how to move forward in a positive manner. Use this article, the questions I’ve posed and to write a yearly reflection about these five major areas as a substantive foundation for setting meaningful goals and resolutions for the year ahead.

Navigating the Down Days in Life

“During these inevitable down days that we all go through, when challenges seem insurmountable, and the losses keep piling up, it is essential to cultivate your internal mental strength to navigate through the storm.”

Life inevitably has its various peaks and valleys, days filled with various successes and other days where nothing goes your way. During these inevitable down days that we all go through, when challenges seem insurmountable, and the losses keep piling up, it is essential to cultivate your internal mental strength to navigate through the storm. Being mentally strong doesn’t mean avoiding any hardship and making sure no problems ever find you; rather, it involves developing the resilience and coping mechanisms necessary to face your adversity head-on.

Everybody has down days in their life, and it is better for you to acknowledge and accept the down days, face them rather than run from them, understand the factors contributing to building up your mental strength, and adopting the practical strategies to emerge stronger and better on the other side.

As the popular English saying goes, “when it rains, it pours.” I’ve found that things tend to go wrong in bunches similarly to how when things go well, they tend to go well all at once. You must be able to brace yourself for these tough times and to look for the positives where you can during the down days. The first step towards bolstering your mental strength during challenging times is acknowledging and accepting the existence of down days.

Denying or suppressing negative emotions can exacerbate the situation, leading to prolonged stress and anxiety for every challenge that comes your way. You should not shy away from the reality of difficult moments as it will allow for a healthier processing of your emotions. It is essential to recognize that everyone faces hardships in life, and experiencing these lows is an integral part of what makes us human.

In addition, acknowledging the down days in life doesn’t equate to having a weakness. On the contrary, it is a testament to having both emotional intelligence and self-awareness. By accepting the presence of challenges that you are facing, you can better understand your emotional state and take proactive steps towards building up resilience.

Mental strength is not a fixed trait but a skill that can be developed through intentional efforts and experiences. Understanding the components of mental strength is crucial for cultivating resilience during tough times. If you can manage your emotions, have a positive mindset despite your circumstances, and still build healthy habits, you will be able to meet the down days head on instead of letting them consume you.

Effective emotional management is a cornerstone of one’s mental strength. It involves acknowledging and expressing emotions in a healthy manner. Suppressing your emotions can lead to a buildup of stress, anxiety, and other negative feelings. When things are going wrong, you should work even harder to navigate your emotions, seek healthy outlets such as writing, playing sports, talking to a friend or family member, or engaging in fun activities. Don’t let an argument, a disagreement, a difference of opinion make your down day worse than it needs to be.

Cultivating a positive mindset doesn’t mean denying the existence of your problems but rather in adopting an optimistic perspective to getting through them. This involves reframing those challenges as actual opportunities for growth and learning. Practicing gratitude, focusing on the solutions rather than the problems only, and surrounding yourself with positive influences can all help contribute to the development of a resilient mindset.

Our Mental strength is closely tied to our daily habits. It is key to keeping your routines going that prioritize physical health, such as regular exercise and sufficient sleep, which positively impacts mental well-being especially during down times. Additionally, I believe that incorporating mindfulness practices, such as practicing meditation, yoga, or deep breathing exercises, can help manage your stress, anxiety and enhance your resilience.

While understanding the components of our mental strength is crucial during rough periods of time, you should be thinking of practical strategies for navigating the down days of life. Here are some strategies that can come in handy when you are going through a tough time and may not know where to go for sustained support:

  1. Cultivate a Support System: During tough times, the value of a strong support system cannot be overstated. Whether it’s family, friends, or a professional counselor, having someone to share thoughts and feelings with about what you are going through will provide both emotional validation and a sense of connection. Social support acts as a buffer against stress and fosters one’s resilience.
  2. Set Realistic Goals: In the face of sustained adversity, it’s essential to set realistic and achievable goals. Breaking down larger challenges into smaller, manageable tasks on a day by day basis can make the journey seem less daunting. Celebrating small victories that happen to you, especially during the down days along the way, contributes to a sense of accomplishment and boosts confidence.
  3. Embrace Change as an Opportunity: Life is inherently dynamic, and change is a constant. Instead of resisting changes to your life, instead, you should view the change(s) as an opportunity for growth and adaptation. Flexibility in your thinking and the ability to adjust to new circumstances are key components of maintaining mental strength. Embracing the change(s) will allow you to navigate challenges with a more open and resilient mindset.
  4. Practice Self-Compassion: During difficult times or days, it can be tempting to often criticize oneself and focus on your perceived shortcomings. Practicing self-compassion instead involves treating oneself with kindness and understanding. Acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes and faces challenges. Nobody’s perfect. Treat yourself with the same empathy and support you would offer to a friend or a family member.
  5. Learn from Adversity: Every challenge, no matter how difficult or large it is, provides an opportunity for personal learning and growth. Reflecting on your past experiences, identifying the lessons learned from past challenges, and applying them to current situations contribute to personal development. Adversity can be a powerful teacher, which can shape individuals into more resilient and resourceful beings.
  6. Seek Professional Help When Needed: It’s important to recognize when professional assistance is necessary and that you do not have to go through it alone. If feelings of sadness, anxiety, or hopelessness persist, reaching out to a mental health professional can provide valuable support. Therapy offers a safe space to explore emotions, develop coping strategies, and gain insights into one’s thought patterns and habitual actions. There is nothing wrong and no stigma with taking care of yourself mentally in my view including reaching out to a mental health professional during down times.

Life’s down days are an inevitable part of being human, but they need not define us. Building mental strength to make it through the down days involves a combination of acknowledging the challenges, understanding the different components of resilience, and implementing practical strategies to navigate adversity and stress. By cultivating a strong support system, setting realistic goals, embracing change, practicing self-compassion, learning from adversity, and seeking professional help when needed, you can develop the mental fortitude necessary to weather life’s storms.

In the journey that is life, it is not the absence of challenges that defines us but our ability to rise above the ones we face. Mental strength is a skill that can be honed, a muscle that grows stronger with intentional dedication, effort, and practice. By embracing the down days and seeing them as possible opportunities for growth and self-discovery, you can emerge from adversity not only intact from having overcome them but also having been strengthened and made more resilient than ever before.

Tempering The Ego

“Ego, to me, is a holistic sense of our abilities, capabilities, and our possibilities. For the ego to not go out of control, it has to be tamed and to be done so repeatedly.”

The Ego can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. It can drive us forward to make progress in different areas of your lives, but it can also detract from us by setting our expectations too high and in not actually challenging ourselves to see if our ego is being realistic. Ego, to me, is a holistic sense of our abilities, capabilities, and our possibilities. For the ego to not go out of control, it has to be tamed and to be done so repeatedly.

When the Ego is not tamed, it has an unhealthy tendency to run wild. Your Ego can grow, often unhealthily, when you leave it to be unchallenged. I have found that those people with the biggest Egos in life are the ones who never challenge themselves to back it up in a real way. The Ego can inflate our sense of self to the point where we are actively deluding ourselves with who we want to be without taking account of who we really are.

Everyone has an ‘Ego’ or Latin for ‘I’ and as world-renowned psychologist Sigmund Freud pointed out1, we each have a perception of our ‘self’ that will differ often from how others would perceive us. Our ‘Ego’ or our ‘I’ is often about our physical self, the sum of our experiences, our innate abilities, and our drive to get ahead in life. The ego can grow, or it can shrink, often based on how we alone view ourselves, but it also is reflective of how others see us and what they expect of us. The Ego must be kept in check because it can inflate or deflate based on what we tell ourselves about who we are and how others tell us who we are. The Ego is malleable and can be different on the day based on what we experience or what happens to us.

You can have an excellent day one day where you win a sports competition, gain a promotion at work, or overcome a challenge that you previously thought was impossible. One good day can massively inflate our Egos and while it is good to boost one’s Ego and be proud of what you accomplished and how hard you worked, you should still have that sense of humility and understand that one good day does not mean that you are suddenly God’s gift to Earth.

The same can be said of when you have a terrible day such as perhaps you failed an important test or exam, a work presentation you gave wasn’t received well, or you had someone insult you or talk down to you. These kinds of events, especially in the same day, can really wound your Ego and your self-worth. While bad events can hurt you, you should not totally give up your Ego or sense of ‘self’ from them as that would be disastrous. One bad day does not have to be a referendum on the sum of your entire life. Your Ego has to be resilient, when it is both humbled and challenged, and this should happen on a daily basis.

My firm belief is that you should never get too low or get too high when it comes to the self or your Ego. You have to constantly remind yourself of what you do well on, what you need to work on, and what you have no experience or ability with. For example, I like to think that I’m a good writer at this point, but some articles have turned out better than I expected, and some have been worse than I thought. Despite how I perceive my written work and how others do so, I can continue to work on my style, syntax, and substance, and I can expand my writing focus to challenge myself that I may have previously avoided on different topics that are new to me.

I also think of how one’s Ego needs to be challenged especially in a new activity or hobby that you have picked up. A good way to think about the Ego is to challenge it in different ways by putting yourself out there physically for yourself to be tested in that manner. One example of this is to train in the martial arts where your body is being challenged. You may weightlift, run, or consider yourself athletic, but it’s a good way to measure yourself against others when you are training against other people who have been doing it for a while and who could be bigger or stronger than you.

It does not mean that you won’t become better as a martial artist, but you should temper the Ego by challenging those practitioners who know more, can teach you new skills and abilities, and who you can face off with even when you are getting beaten for a while by them. Whether it’s’ boxing, jiu jitsu, krav maga, or kickboxing, I think any martial arts, whichever one(s) you choose, are a great way to temper one’s Ego. This is because you’ll see just how exactly you measure up against other fighters, especially if you’re new to the sport, and while you may think you are strong, fast, or have great stamina, you won’t truly know if that is the case or not until you step on the mat or into the ring.

The same could be said when you challenge your Ego mentally such as when you try to learn something new or adapt a new skillset that you know nothing about. I find that learning a new language is a way to temper my Ego in a healthy manner because every language, while they have some similarities, are also quite different and cause me to adapt how I learn that language, and the kinds of difficulties I’ll have when learning it based on how the language is written or spoken.

While I may be great at learning Spanish and am comfortable there, I can throw my Ego for a loop by learning a non-romance language such as German. I can brag that I can speak one or two foreign languages well after a lot of practice and that fuels my Ego but so that it doesn’t get too fragile, I temper it by learning a different language or trying to advance my Spanish or other learned language with more advanced material.

The Ego is constantly changing and evolving because our sense of self is different daily. The key is to not let it grow too big without putting yourself out there and being challenged or by deluding yourself by not ever trying anything new by putting your mental or physical abilities to the test. The best way to temper the Ego is to constantly challenge it both physically and mentally to have a more accurate measure of yourself against other peers in your field(s) or area(s) of expertise.

You should not ever ignore your Ego as it is your sense of ‘self’ and how you fit into the world, but rather you should not think of yourself as either the best or the worst in anything without going out into the world and seeing where exactly you fit in. As the popular expression goes, “you’ll never know until you try” and when it comes to the Ego or self, you must be testing yourself and by extension, testing your Ego to temper it or and keep it in check. The worst thing to do to yourself when it comes to the Ego is to continue to delude yourself by not trying, never challenging yourself, or not trying to go beyond the standards that you have set for yourself.

Source:

1.) https://www.britannica.com/topic/ego-philosophy-and-psychology

Why You Should Maintain A Solid Frame

“Life will throw an innumerable number of challenges at you. It will test you day in and day out and create obstacles and problems that you will have to solve. You will be challenged both mentally and physically to make it through while preserving your calm and your resiliency.”

Life will throw an innumerable number of challenges at you. It will test you day in and day out and create obstacles and problems that you will have to solve. You will be challenged both mentally and physically to make it through while preserving your calm and your resiliency. When you think of what ‘frame’ is in the psychological sense, think about what makes up your personality. Are you cool under pressure? Are you able to maintain your calm when things are unraveling or getting out of hand? Can you persevere when faced with both known and unknown problems?

If you answered ‘yes’ to those rhetorical questions, then your frame is solid and on a good foundation. Having a solid frame is not just about housing or for a building’s physical structure, but it can be extended to people and our emotional makeup. When your frame is solid, you will be able to meet challenges head on and even if you fail or fall short, you will have met the challenge with resiliency and perseverance. Having solid frame is primarily not what happens to you but how do you deal with what happens to you, especially when things are not going your way.

An example of a person with a solid frame does not get discouraged easily, does not overreact, and keeps their emotions under control even when internally, they may be struggling or dealing with the multiple emotions bubbling under the surface. That does not mean to not show emotion at all but to hold it in control and be able to hold them in check to not let your emotions get to you and cause you to crumble under pressure. In an emergency or a life-threatening situation, that is where having a solid frame will come most in handy and could mean the difference between life or death.

For example, when you are on a flooded road in pitch black darkness and there’s no one around and your car isn’t starting, what do you do? Do you shake the wheel in anger, punch it in frustration because the car won’t start, and let the waters consume you while you lash out? Or do you take advantage of the minute or less available to unhook your seatbelt, crack the window wide open, and create enough physical space so you can get your body out fast before you are unable to get out with the water filling up to your head leaving you vulnerable to drowning?

Being able to maintain your emotional state even under intense pressure will set you apart from others and help solidify that frame so that when the time comes and something terrible happens, you will be able to handle it without losing emotional control when you need it the most. You never think about your emotional state until it is being engaged by outside pressures and when it’s being challenged by internal or external factors, sometimes both at once. Think about those jobs where your frame needs to be solid almost 100% of the time whether you are a firefighter, police officer, soldier, paramedic, etc. Having a solid frame is key to making it through the day without an error or issue that could be fatal if serious enough.

Now, even if your day job or school life is not as engaging to your emotional state, you still need to be able to handle tasks under pressure or stress whether you are driving in ‘rush hour’ traffic or attempting to make your way out of a rambunctious crowd at the end of a rowdy concert with thousands of people fumbling to the exit together. Your solid frame needs to be engaged as much as possible even when you don’t think you’ll need to use it. A disaster or an emergency or a problem can sprout up when you least expect it so it is important to be consistently practicing how to strengthen your frame of mind when it will be tested.

Having a solid frame also extends to your friendships and relationships so that you will be able to handle any potential issues or conflicts that will need to be worked out. This is especially the case when there’s years of past relations or friendship at stake. You must be able to not let your emotions get the best of you when it comes to how you feel about the person(s) but rather to handle the issue rationally as much as possible with your best interest in mind. It is important to not lose your temper or get distraught because of the issue when you’ve been through a lot together with that person over the years, but you should treat the problem you’re having with them as separate from how you feel about them to deal with it logically.

Being able to process and control your emotions in a healthy manner is the main part of having a solid frame. Being primarily concerned with the problem or issue rationally and how to figure it out logically without the issue becoming too emotional will save you a lot of grief, heartache, and even your life. I do recommend trying to plot out how you feel about stressful situations in retrospect and if you were able to maintain a solid frame or not. Think about if you were able to keep your emotions in check or did you lash out which caused the situation to spiral negatively?

If you are in a pattern of personal behavior when your consistent responses to stressful or anxious or tense situations leave you emotionally drained, and you were not able to solve the problem(s) effectively as a result, you will need to work on solidifying your frame and working on your overall emotional state. Sometimes, changing your emotional state involves writing out how you would react to hypothetical situations. You may also need to act out such situations with a trusted friend or family member or even a psychologist.

Any of these examples would be able to see where you went wrong or how the stressful situation could have been handled better. Above all else, a solid frame involves thinking before you act, deep breathing, and evaluating as quickly as possible a course of action rather than lamenting or despairing on why you are in the situation to begin with. Without establishing a solid frame, you may not be able to handle what is thrown at you in life. Your emotions may continue to get the better of you when you do not have them under control to begin with leaving you vulnerable to a more stressful and chaotic life.

‘A Serious Man’ – Film Review and Analysis

“Above all else, it is a story of a ‘serious’ man who wants to be taken seriously and seems unable to be granted that not only from his teenage children but also from his estranged wife and it seems from religious leaders in his suburban Jewish community.”

Man can be tested again and again but how exactly he deals with life’s challenges and his overall resolve and mettle will be seen as the measure of his true character. If I had to sum up the excellent movie, ‘A Serious Man’, it is a dark comedy but also a human drama regarding fate, fortune, and whether the role of a higher being can ultimately affect our destiny. Above all else, it is a story of a ‘serious’ man who wants to be taken seriously and seems unable to be granted that not only from his teenage children but also from his estranged wife and it seems from religious leaders in his suburban Jewish community.

‘A Serious Man’ (2009) is an excellent modern-day film directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, who I would imagine have had a similar childhood to the lead character of Larry Gopnik (played by Michael Stuhlbarg), which is the inspiration for this adapted screenplay, which is brilliantly written and relatable even if you’re not of the Jewish faith. The Coen Brothers both were raised and grew up as Jews in 1960s – 1970s Minnesota near the Twin Cities. It is likely they had to deal with being religious minorities in a mostly goyim (non-Jewish state) as well as with the growing counterculture and changing attitudes towards parental authority, sex, style, personal responsibility, and other societal upheavals including regarding race, gender, and politics.

While the Coen Brothers have had successful movies before and have won Academy Awards for movies such as ‘No Country for Old Men’, this film, ‘A Serious Man’ is quite unique given that it combines both comedic and dramatic elements, usually in the same scene. Overall, it triumphs as a film in doing that and is also laugh-out-loud funny and additionally heart-wrenchingly sad and melancholic. This film was universally praised and as I re-watched the film again after many years, it stands as one of the best films of the 2000s. Not only is the screenplay and writing engaging and insightful but also the acting is top notch thanks to the hard work of Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, among others in the film.

When you consider the main themes of ‘A Serious Man’, you think of several of them that deal with human nature such as upholding your morality under stress, taking care of those closest to you, dealing with adversity and unforeseen hurdles, and how to deal with questions of faith when you feel that you have been abandoned. As I mentioned earlier on, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) wants to be taken seriously given the way he has lived his life and he has strived to do so with his academic and professional accomplishments. Sadly though, he is not only not able to get as much success with his professional pursuits, but he also struggles to hold his personal life together.

Despite how ‘serious’ of a man Larry thinks he is, those in his life can’t help but not take him seriously or choose not to. Instead of reassessing his actions and trying to make some behavioral changes or work on any personal defects he may has in addressing his challenges, Larry instead challenges his faith in God and wonders if the Rabbis of his synagogue will have the answers to the questions God has challenged Larry with.

As the film starts out, Larry appears to be relatively successful as a Physics professor waiting to be tenured. He teaches his classes, does research (albeit has not published anything), and enjoys the work he does. Larry is married with two teenage children and a modest house in the suburbs. Him and his family want for nothing, and it looks like he has everything you could want out of life on the surface.

As appearances can be deceiving, the film breaks down how one man’s life can be turned upside down and inferring what events beyond Larry’s control could have tipped his fortune to be negative, as in a curse, years or centuries ago. It is a series of events that tend to turn Larry’s life upside down even when he has not done anything wrong. A Korean student in his Physics class tries to bribe Larry to get a better grade and leaves before Larry can return the money and punish him for the illegal act.

Larry also comes home to his wife, Judith, who asks him for a divorce and for a ‘gett’ or permission to do so she can remarry within the faith to Sy Abelman (Fred Melamed) who everyone takes seriously as a ‘Serious Man’ except for Larry. Larry is envious of Sy to some degree and feels like he has everything given to him whereas Larry has had to work hard for his success. Suddenly, ‘the domino effect’ of one negative event after another happens including Larry losing his home, access to his bank accounts, his marriage, and even his relationship to his teenage children become estranged.

This string of unfortunate events has Larry looking to cast judgment on God and questioning his faith in Judaism. Larry goes to three different rabbis whose advice and counsel does not help him any further. He cannot relate to what they tell them especially as the eldest, he considers to be too unavailable or unwilling and the youngest rabbi being too inexperienced or immature, who end up wasting his time. The 2nd and wisest rabbi give him the advice through an allegory, that while fictional, has a good message to it ends up helping Larry the most that God can only provide the questions, but you must find your own answers. The best way the 2nd rabbi implies to Larry is that he must “help himself by helping others.”

Essentially, Larry Gopnik must look beyond his own pain and selfish wants and look to control what he can and do what he can to get his life back on track. Larry can also do ‘mitzvahs’ especially regarding his own family. Larry’s younger brother, Arthur, is homeless and not mentally sound so Larry tries to get him on his feet but struggles to find the money or the resources to help his brother with his many troubles. He still attempts to maintain better relations with his kids, his soon to be ex-wife, and with his work colleagues. Without spoiling the rest of the movie, Larry understands that he must look to help others rather than looking to God to intervene. While ‘The Boss’ is present to give questions, the answers must come from within.

How Larry stands up to challenges and adversity is like the Torah’s stories about men like Job and Jonah who had their lives thrown into upheaval but were able to get over the anguish by holding true to their faith in God but looking inwards in their own strength, knowledge, and belief in morality and good will to make it through on the other side better than before. Life throws challenges at us every day and how we react to them and try to get through it with our God-given wisdom, kindness, compassion, patience, and reasoning will decide how far we can proceed in life to get back to being successful. Fortune is not everlasting, and faith will not provide good fortune. What can provide good fortune is to do your best, help yourself and others around you, and look to your own inner beliefs and values to guide you through the tough times.

‘A Serious Man’ is about a man who considers himself to be serious but has to struggle for others to call him ‘serious.’ In an effort to be taken seriously, Larry does end up struggling to fulfill the other important parts of his life that require his attention. He can forget to be loving and caring to his wife, attentive and helpful to his children, and more involved within the Jewish community including at his son’s Hebrew school. Larry is not a bad man but the cracks in his life cause some bad events to happen including events for which there is no logical explanation. Larry does his best to be a good man and although he is flawed, bad things happen out of nowhere to him.

The test throughout this excellent film is how do you claw back from adversity and try to give yourself the best shot at having good things happen in your life. Even if your family may appear to be cursed or have a string of bad fortune dating back to the shtetls of Eastern Europe, how do you turn it around so your son or your daughter don’t deal with the same tragedies and setbacks? There are no easy answers in ‘A Serious Man’ but the Coen Brothers make it clear that it is not wise to look to God to solve the problems for you or provide the answers.

The central message of this film is not just for Jews but for all people. God may have provided life’s questions for you to answer but it’s up to you alone to answer them throughout your life. While you may lose faith in hose providing counsel or advice or in the religion itself, the film makes clear that you have to believe in yourself, to help yourself pull through the pain and sorrow, and to help other people, especially the family and friends closest to you, who are going through tough times as well, whose aid and assistance you can provide may be able to help you get to the right direction in life again and to lead you to a better place than you were before.

Anatomy of a Scene – The Climb

My love for The Dark Knight trilogy by Christopher Nolan is based on how realism blends with the superhero themes that make it a compelling series of movies. Not only is the acting, cinematography, and directions of these films brilliant but you enjoy the deeper themes and meaning behind the storylines. Some of these scenes including the one I am highlighting from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ have not only great symbolism but larger lessons for our own lives on how we react to adversity and the challenges that life throws at us. Even when you are not Batman, a superhero with genius level intellect and almost superhuman physical strength, we can relate to Batman because he is fallible, and he has his weaknesses like we all do.

The brilliance of this particular scene from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is it shows Batman or Bruce Wayne at one of his lowest lows. He is an older man, not as physically imposing or as intimidating as he used to be, and he has lost almost everyone who meant to something to him. This scene comes in the 2nd half of the film and is located in a pit which has a double meaning to it. From the depths of this pit, we wonder if Batman will be able to rise and become who he is meant to be in order to face his adversaries head on.

‘The Climb’ scene from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is the best scene in the The Dark Knight trilogy in my opinion. Between Hans Zimmer’s music to the dialogue to the feeling of suspense to the ultimate payoff, it is an incredibly powerful scene that will stick with you even years later when you have forgotten other parts of the movie. I would like to breakdown the scene’s setting and what is happening along with giving some background as to what is significant about the events of the scene.

The beginning of the scene begins with the Bruce training physically in order to be strong enough to leave the pit where he is a prisoner like other similarly forsaken men. He is confident in his abilities even after having fractured a few of his back vertebrae after getting ‘broken’ by Bane, a masked villain who seems to be immune from Batman’s stealth and fighting tactics. After being sent to ‘the worst hell on Earth’ according to Bane, Batman slowly recovers from his injuries with help from the prison doctor and the blind seer who give him the history of the prison. It is Bane’s prison and he has sent many men there to die as no one has ever escaped except for Bane, which is only a rumor at this point. Bruce tells the prison doctor that he is not ‘meant to die in here’ even though to the doctor, it makes little difference where Bruce dies since no one has ever made the leap to freedom to survive and leave.

Even with Bruce’s back healing and seeing the urgency of Gotham City being under lockdown by being threatened with a nuclear weapon and his armed henchmen, Bruce has to spend a few months doing pushups, pull-ups, sit-ups and any other activity in order to physically be ready to escape. “Survival is the spirit” says the blind seer who used to care for Bane when he was in the prison. Bruce is ready physically according to him and he says his soul is ready, but he fails a few different times and re-injures himself while trying to make this leap to freedom.

It is more than just your body being ready to jump but it is also about the spirit, which revolves around mental toughness. The blind seer reminds Bruce that he cannot make the leap if he does not fear death. Bruce is not afraid of death in general but is afraid of dying in a pit prison for which there is no escape while his home city burns and suffers. Bruce is angry at Bane and wants vengeance but before he is able to leave, he must conquer the ultimate fear of death by facing it head on.

The blind seer tells him again that he has to “Make the climb…” Bruce asks incredulously, “How?” having tried multiple times with a rope attached to him to prevent him from falling to death from the top area of the pit. The blind seer reminds him that he must jump “without the rope” which acts as a safety harness, “Then fear will find you again…” In order to conquer the fear of death and dying in the pit, Bruce must leap to freedom with nothing holding him back, not a rope nor his fears such as of bats.

Bruce only brings with him ‘supplies’ for his journey back to Gotham remaining ever hopeful he will survive this leap to freedom with no rope to hold him back or keep him from suffering the deadly consequences. Bane’s prisoners start chanting from their cells ‘Deshi Bashara’ over and over again and louder as Bruce gets ready to climb out of the pit. Bruce asks the Doctor, “what does it mean?” and the Doctor replies, “Rise.” Bruce’s father, before his death, asked his son, “Why do we fall?” and after all this time as Batman and the trials and tribulations he has experienced as a caped crusader, he finally knows the only answer in his life is to “Rise.”

Looking on and as the blind seer hears the ‘Deshi Bashara’ chants get louder and louder, Bruce begins his climb out of the pit without the rope. As Bruce gets towards the final jump out from the top ledge of the pit to climb out, the music starts to crescendo and the bats that he has feared all of his life since his parents’ death fly out of the top edge of the pit and surround him as he gets ready to jump.

Realizing he no longer has the constant fear of them, he realizes he is Batman risen again and can make the full jump with confidence that he will make it. Seeing daylight above him and having faith in his ability to rise up to save his city, Bruce holds on to the other ledge successfully making about a 3-meter jump to avoid death and live to fight another day. Having seen daylight and the sun fully for the first time in months, Bruce is aghast that he made it but his determination to save Gotham steadies himself for the long journey ahead.

Because Bruce Wayne is Batman, he remembers to save Bane’s prisoners, most likely innocent men captured in the fight asked the supervillain and throws them down the long ropes so that they too can climb out to freedom with his help. It’s the small details like that which make Nolan’s Batman trilogy the best of all Batman films. Bruce’s Batman persona does not forget the men who helped him heal his back, train himself physically, and offer the wisdom to face death head on in order to face Bane again and save the city. This very pit that Bruce rises from is directly inspired by the comic books themselves as it is similar to the ‘Lazarus Pit’ where men can be regenerated and made immortal again by the pit’s healing powers.

There is also references made to Ra’s Al-Ghul who appears to Bruce in a vision speaking about the ‘many forms of immortality’ that exist and how he may still be around through Bane’s control of the League of Shadows or otherwise. “There is a prison in a more ancient part of the world, a pit where men are thrown to suffer and die, but sometimes a man rises from the darkness. Sometimes, the pit sends something back.”

Bruce was able to get back because he rose from the darkness of his own despair from being broken in terms of mind and body but was able to risk it all in order to save his city. He faced his fears head on and was able to have enough confidence in his abilities to leap to freedom and be ‘sent back’ to Gotham to avenge those suffered under Bane’s tyranny. Bruce is a hero as well because he is selfless and thinks about others before himself such as those men in the pit he freed and giving them real hope rather than just a glimmer of sunlight by handing them down the rope so they could be free too from Bane’s cruelties.

This brilliant scene can have a deeper meaning for us all because during our lives, we will all be down in the metaphorical pit being unable to escape our own fears, doubts, and phobias. However, we must always face our fears and rise out of the pit of despair to give ourselves the best chance to succeed. Whether its feeding your family, learning a new skill to be employed, or winning a championship in an intensive physically or mentally challenging activity, we must face our fear head on and realize it is better to have thrust ourselves into these challenges head on than staying down in the pit of our own worries.

During our lives, we must cut the proverbial rope of convenience, comfort, and easy living to truly develop ourselves and our abilities. Life is not without risk including sickness and death, but we must continue to fight on and continue to escape the self-made pits that lie within each and every one of us. Motivating yourself to fight against these problems and letting go of your fears will make you a stronger person. Whenever life gets you down, remember to fight on and use this movie scene as a motivation for you to continue on. You will be down in the pit as Bruce was during this film, but it does not mean that you are doomed to stay there. With taking on your fears, living life how you want it to be lived, and overcoming challenges and obstacles, you too will make the leap to freedom in mind, body, and soul.

Hiking in Florianopolis

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Camera: Samsung Galaxy J2 Core

Location: Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil 

‘Everything In Its Right Place’ (A Video Retrospective)

It’s hard to really love most music videos today which tend to be shallow and lacking in any original thought. During past decades leading up to the 2000’s, it seems like actual effort and work was put into music videos of songs in order to get on MTV but also to highlight the themes of the song as well as the entire album. There are a number of my favorite artists who produce great music videos including Radiohead, The Smashing Pumpkins, U2, Oasis, Dave Matthews Band, etc.

However, MTV and official music videos are not what they used to be. In an age of instant gratification and live concerts being streamed of the songs you love, it’s hard to appreciate music videos as being part of an increasingly crowded creative marketplace. While official music videos may be dying, creative videos and covers of songs from our favorite artists seem to be on the rise. Considering that music videos are usually for hit singles of certain songs and not for entire albums, there has started to be a movement towards producing independent music videos for songs that never received the official ‘music video’ song treatment.

The rise of YouTube and other video platforms has allowed creative people who are fans of good music to produce their own music videos. While they started out as being kind of cliché or very amateur, they are now becoming very professional and also very related to the lyrics of the song in question. I saw a particular music video of a favorite song of mine featured on YouTube a couple of weeks ago. The song is ‘Everything in Its Right Place’ by Radiohead and it is an excellent song by my favorite band but the one thing that this song never had was its own brilliant music video to go with it.

Because of YouTube, the creative skills of a fan named ‘Capitao Ahab’, which is a pretty fun name in its own right, although I believe the original video creator’s name is Joschka Laukeninks who created it and titled it ‘BACKSTORY.’ It is a now an unofficial music video on the popular video platform that is really well done and professionally shot that has received almost two million views. A video like this would not have existed ten years ago but luckily it does. Part of the reason why this music video is so impactful is that it works so well with the content of this particular Radiohead song.

‘Everything in Its Right Place’ like many of Radiohead’s songs are open to interpretation but it is soothing with its use of synthesizers, digitally manipulated voices, and haunting electronic sounds that sound comforting when you have your headphones on at full blast. The lyric itself of ‘Everything in Its Right Place’ focuses on how to maintain your composure and your levelheadedness as you go through life. The fan music video’s storyline of a baby becoming a boy, a man, and then an elderly man highlights the ups and downs of life and how there are ‘two colors in my head.’

The ‘two colors’ could be interpreted as the good and the bad that you will go through as you go through life’s uncertain and mysterious waters. In particular, the song begins with the oft-repeated lyric of ‘Kid A’, the title of Radiohead’s 2000 album and expresses the experiences of a ‘boy’ as he is born, grows up, matures, and eventually dies. “Yesterday, I woke up sucking on a lemon.” Is also a lyric up to the fan’s interpretation but it implies that life can be sour as well as sweet and that you will have to taste and swallow the bitterness of life if you want to enjoy the sweet part of the fruit.

The music video begins on a hopeful note as a baby boy gains his first steps as he walks through his parents’ house. The sweetness of his childhood is referenced with meeting animals for the first time, having his 6th birthday, going to the beach, and experiencing pure joy at that age. Childhood innocence does not last forever so the boy ends up experiencing his first pains in life including the accidental burning down of his house, fights between his mother and his father, the divorce and exit of his mother from his life, pressures from his father to succeed as he ages into being a teenager.

Learning in school, riding his bicycle, summer days at the swimming pool are some of the joys of teenage life including his first experiences with girls as well with drugs and late nights with friends. Still though, the joys of discovery and youth are balanced out by his struggles with partying too much, getting into rights, being angry at the world and dealing with bad breakups. In one part of the video, the teenager emerges from the pool as a young man ready to take on the world in his 20’s. He thinks his partying days and life as a Bachelor will last forever until he stares at the woman of his dreams on New Year’s Eve and she stares back signaling a new relationship that will change his life.

They date, travel, live together, and the young man eventually proposes to the woman of his dreams. As the video speeds up, so does the aging and life of the man as he gets married, celebrates the birth of his child, and gets ready for middle-aged challenges and prospects. Moving into a house as newlyweds, getting a better job, moving up the corporate ladder, using his new car, traveling for work, going to important meetings, and shuffling along while growing a beard signifies how fast life speeds up the older you become. Sometimes, you’re running so fast that you can’t keep track of who or what you are. In the video, the man still remembers the little blissful moments of carrying his child with his beloved wife, family dinners, and trying to balance work and family until tragedy suddenly strikes.

The hardest part of life is unforeseen tragedies and we hope and pray to never experience any to happen, but this man has the tragic occurrence of seeing his wife and child running towards him across the street only to be hit by a bus and to be taken off life support. The song’s crescendo builds up as the man struggles through grief, longing, and how to move on when he knows he can’t but has to anyway. After the tragedy, what once was promising is now dull and at once he was fast to move through the world, he staggers slowly through it wondering what it is all worth and why keep going? How can one fill the void in their own heart when it was taken out of them and cannot be put back?

We see the man continue with his work, entertaining clients, meeting a new woman and getting married again but there is the lingering sense that it is not what he envisioned his life to be. He can have a child with her, but it won’t be the same as his first true love or bring back his first child. Trying to fill the void with an extramarital affair, fighting with his new wife, jogging and running to keep moving forward to futilely escape from one’s own pre-destined aging are all ways of coping both unhealthily and healthily as you go through middle age to becoming elderly in your later life.

Maybe if he stops running or walking or jogging, he will have to face his own eventual demise and departure from this world or face his memories of losing loved ones or losing his mother. The aged man with gray hairs continues to work, to exercise, to keep up his health by going to the doctor and trying to save his marriage. Some of these battles he will win, and some he will lose although we will never know from such a short video. Eventually, the man is elderly and looking back on his life from his bed and looks to be alone in the world.

However, he does not remember the tragedies that befell him as we all must endure in life sometimes. Instead, he remembers the first time he went to dance at a club, the way he looked at his firstborn child, hugging his beloved first wife, and how she stared at him lovingly on New Year’s Eve and how she stared at him at their wedding and when she gave birth to their child. He remembers the tragedy too but remembers those special moments that made his life truly worth living. You are left wondering after watching this four-minute video of a complicated, yet powerful life filled with tragedy and joy whether it was all worth it for the man. Would he do it again if he knew what was to happen in the future?

If we all knew what was to happen in the future until the end of our days, would we all do it again from the beginning? Would it be worth it even if there is pain, tragedy, and death? Would it be worth the love, joy, and pleasure that we experience as human beings as well? It really is out of our control, but this music video does an excellent job of pondering life’s deepest questions in only four minutes and only with the wistful yet dreamy lyrics of Thom Yorke from Radiohead creating a powerful combination of a great song and a great video. It may not be an original music video from Radiohead but whoever created it did a great job of getting a powerful message across to this 2-million strong audience on life, love, and loss.

If you would like to watch the music video on ‘Everything In Its Right Place’, you can find it here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnfPaaMR6Qc

‘BACKSTORY’ Full Video on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/245687147

The Rule of Diminishing Marginal Return

There is a well-known law in economics called the ‘Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility’, which states that as consumption of a good or service increases per unit, the satisfaction derived from consuming an additional unit or more will lead to a subsequent decline in its overall utility. In other words, the more you consume, the less satisfied you will be with each additional product or service you purchase. The first thing you buy, use, or consume will be the most satisfying but the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th unit of the same item you utilize will not be as useful and could even not satisfy you at all.

This fundamental law in basic economics is one that is worth memorizing because it makes total sense. The first chocolate bar you consume will be delicious and fulfilling. You may not be satisfied with just one chocolate bar so you may end up eating another one since the first one was so tasty. However, anyone will tell you that the 2nd chocolate bar will not be as tasty or satisfying as the 1st one and you may even end up with a stomachache from eating too much chocolate if you are not careful.

The ‘Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility’ does not just apply to economic principles but goes far beyond that in terms of being applied to human psychology. The act of consumption, I would argue, is not just an economic one but also applies to the psychology of choice and how we live our lives. Everybody is a consumer in one way or another whether it’s the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the food we eat each day. Without any consumption, we would not survive but it is our choices that define our consumption habits and how we behave not just as economic actors but as human beings.

In a psychological context, instead of calling it the ‘Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility’, I would refer to it as the ‘Rule of Diminishing Marginal Return’, which is similar but discussing more how it’s a rule of life that the more we buy of something, the less return on that investment we will get out of it. The first of something whether that’s the purchase of a new car, a first trip to a new country, or the first time you try a new cuisine. These experiences will captivate you and do its job of putting your happiness level to a 9 or 10, but it’s a rule of life that it won’t stay there. While the memory of that experience will provide you with satisfaction and joy in its remembrance, your psychological state will revert to the norm of being level in terms of happiness or satisfaction with life. You may try to buy or consume more of something to recapture that feeling of happiness but that would actually be counterproductive in the long run and actually create false expectations compared to the first time you purchased or consumed that activity, experience, food, or drink.

How do you avoid the marginal returns of consuming, buying, or eating too much? Well, that is not easy to do but that is part of being a mature and responsible adult. You must have enough willpower and be able to reason with yourself that one more plate of food, one more drink, or one more car will not do the trick in giving you happiness. You must realize that your base level of happiness as a person won’t change as a result of consuming more and it may end up backfiring by causing your satisfaction to be lower because you consumed too much in the first place.
Being able to limit your consumption and controlling your vices will make you better off. If you can master your desires or your urges, then you can focus on bettering yourself or making you happier through more sustainable means. If you are working on personal projects, devoting yourself to a volunteer cause, or working on improving yourself mentally and/or physically, that kind of satisfaction will have a higher return on investment than just mindless consumption.

Consumption of goods and services may spike your happiness and satisfaction levels in the short run, but that kind of joy is short-lived and can often feel isolating if you are not sharing in that joy with others. That is why a meal with friends or family is often much better than eating by yourself. It’s why travelling with a close friend will generate more memories than a trip by yourself. It is not wrong to sometimes treat yourself to a nice meal, a nice trip, or a new gadget but shared experiences will make you happier and create more memories than those times that you were on your own in consuming.

One should carefully watch what they consume and monitor how much per day, per week, per month, and even per month they are consuming whether that’s food, drink, goods, etc. Everything in moderation is a good way to be as an adult and if you want to abstain entirely from consuming something, then that is an admirable thing to do as well. The worst thing you would want to do is to become overindulgent or overly reliant on a consumable good to make you happy or give you long-term satisfaction in life. You know better than anyone else the limits of your consumption and that true happiness is derived through shared experiences in life and of challenging yourself to be a better and more developed person.

In the long-term, I believe you get increased rather than diminished return through producing instead of consuming, by challenging yourself mentally and physically, and sharing yourself with others whether that’s through a good meal, a volunteer experience, or a worthwhile group project. All the chocolate and ice cream in the world won’t add to your happiness but would rather detract from it. A bowl of ice cream or a chocolate bar will satisfy you for a few hours, but you eventually will be back to that same level of happiness homeostasis that you had previously.

Instead of looking to keep yourself content or happy all of the time, know that happiness is not everything in life and that you benefit more from the hard work and the struggle that you put yourself on a daily basis than of just sitting on the couch and eating ice cream until the end of time.

When you get to that 2nd or 3rd bowl of ice cream, you should realize that you’re starting to get a stomachache and that you should stop yourself before you get sick. The diminishing marginal return of trying to seek out happiness through ice cream should be counteracted by getting off the couch and into the gym to start working out those extra calories you just gained.

By embracing the struggle of a gym workout and burning off all that ice cream, you’ll be sacrificing that short-term happiness for that long-term struggle but eventual satisfaction of improving yourself physically as a person and making yourself happier and healthier in the long-run as a direct result of your choices and decision-making. You should not be afraid to indulge a little bit every now and then but remember that life is better experienced in moderation and you should always watch what choices you are making as you go through your life as both a consumer and a producer.