On Wednesday, in my clinical session, I had one of those days where the teeth wouldn't come out.
Most of the defining part of my career apart from putting titanium screws in has been the taking out of teeth, and usually, I'm quite good at it, and usually, it doesn't take too long, but today there were a couple of cases which were the opposite of that, and they took a lot longer than they should.
That's the metaphor again for life, isn't it? Sometimes it goes well, and sometimes it doesn't; sometimes you're ahead, and sometimes you're behind; sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose; sometimes you are at the peak of your powers as healthy as you can be, and another time, well, you're not.
And so, what do we do in the low points? What do we do in the hard bits?
Well, what we need to do is to find a platform, some solid ground that we can stand on so that we can see the route to the place we'd like to be and start to go in that direction again, one step at a time. Understanding that, if we do that, the likelihood is that we will probably get there or somewhere close, but once we do, we'll slide back down the hill again (at least to some form or another).
Spending life in the Goldilocks zone (not too hot, not too cold) is ok for some types of characters, but for most people, it's actually psychologically impossible.
We need to have things in our lives where it's possible to lose in order to feel the joy of winning, and the problem with that is that sometimes, well, we'll actually lose.
I think lots of people forgot this (in fact, younger people never even learned it), and therefore, when they're on a losing streak, they get 'anxious', which is a new epidemic. Anxiety used to be a thing that it was normal to feel when things weren't going well, but now it seems it's turned into a disease.
Rolling with the punches, falling and getting back up, understanding that failure is temporary and it's giving up that makes it permanent are the things that built societies, and the lack of these are perhaps some of the things that are killing societies.
When it's hard, take a step back. You're not gonna starve; it's very unlikely that someone is gonna run into your house with a gun and take your family away (this happens in plenty of other places in the world), so appreciate that, smell the roses, and then start building back to better again.
This, too, shall pass, and we will be in a bright space again (and after that, we'll dip and come back again).
There's a name for it.
It's called life.
Blog Post Number - 4210