Ups and downs, highs and lows, good times and bad times, it’s all part of life. Nature has always displayed this duality in terms of its cycles – the winter and spring, planting and harvesting, the high and low tides, day and night, it’s everywhere you look.
We all experience it. So when these high and low times inevitably come into our lives, how do we deal with them?
The first thing to do is to just to realize that such is life. You WILL have cycles of highs and lows. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. It’s just how it is.
The second thing to realize in relation to that, is that it happens to everyone. Nobody is immune to it. Everybody experiences it, even if they don’t necessarily show it.
The third thing, and probably the most important point to get down is that it happens for good reason. We need the fluctuation. It helps prepare us to weather and learn from the future highs and lows that we will inevitably experience so we can understand how to get back to our equilibrium quicker.
The first low of any kind always feels the worse. The first time you get laid off, the first time you get your heart truly broken, the first time you utterly fail at a particular goal – it hurts bad.
Really bad.
But we inevitably learn how to get back to our equilibrium in time, even if we feels like we never will.
We slowly pull ourselves up with our own strength. We get help from those around us. We learn and devise our own tactics and techniques to help get us back to equilibrium that we can later use in the event we find ourselves in a similar situation in the future.
For example, the first time a person gets really depressed, it’s a big shock to their system. It’s a big low time in their lives. But they inevitably climb out of the pit with the help of deep introspection and reflection, meditation, physical exercise, proper nutrition, a helping hand and a listening ear from friends and families, etc., and with all those tactics and techniques, they subsequently get back on their feet.
They’re stronger for it in the end and more importantly, they know what needs to be done to get back to their equilibrium quicker in the event that kind of low time happens again.
Now we come to the opposite end of the scale – the highs.
First off, enjoy the highs of life. Just enjoy it. Relax in the moment. Relish it for all its worth.
And second and most importantly, don’t get too comfortable.
There’s a saying by Napoleon Bonaparte that goes something like this – “The most dangerous moment comes with victory.” And it makes perfect sense when you think about it.
The highs in life tend to cloud our judgment and feed our ego, making it easier to become prideful, arrogant, and sure of everything, making the crash that’s inevitably going to come that much more harder and faster.
When you’re experiencing the high moments in life, that’s the time to learn even more, to work even harder to take advantage of the momentum that’s by your side, to become even more humble. It’s good to sit back and enjoy the moment, but not for so long that you get lost within it.
We tend to lose ourselves too much in the first types of highs and lows in our life, so much that we think the high times will always last and that we’ll never get out of the low times.
But we will pick ourselves out of the low times. And we will experience falls from the highs.
But we will adapt accordingly as it’s something that human beings are inherently very good at doing.
We come up with our own respective rituals and techniques that we hone and craft with time so that when the highs and lows come again, we’re better equipped to handle, weather, and learn from them.
As time passes, you will still experience high and lows but you’ll be able to better handle them and put them in proper perspective in relation to all the other past highs and lows you’ve experienced.
And as you grow older, you will come to the very refreshing realization that – “Yeah. You can handle whatever life throws at you.”
Even if it’s the perfect gift or the kitchen sink.
Because you expect it.
Because you’re grateful for the experience of all the highs and lows and all that they have to offer.
And that you can continue to learn from them in order to get the very best value out of them.
