My girlfriend was feeling a little down today, so I drew her this notecard and explained to her how even when you’re doing everything just right, you can still sometimes be in a bad mood.
Making life better, isn’t that all we want? We might disagree on what we consider a better life, but let’s assume life is actually something that can be better. If there wasn’t, well, life seems a little less purposeful. For sake of argument, we’ll say life can be better.
Especially when we’re feeling down, we tend to get in the mindset of “what am I doing wrong?” We start questioning the choices we’ve been making, worried that we’ve made some wrong ones, or that we’re about to. We start questioning the things we’ve believed for a long time, or the beliefs we’ve recently picked up. What can we do?
Well, there are definitely things we can do to make our lives better. Like being healthy, surrounding ourselves with friends, and smiling. We’ll call these factors, A, B, C, D, E, F, and so on. Because there are actually an infinite number of factors that affect how good our life is. As a matter of fact, some of them may contradict each other, like having another glass of wine. That choice can be both good and detrimental to having a better life, and that balance is somewhat different for every glass of wine we drink.
Well, let’s add these infinite factors together and fit it on a scale from 0 to 100. 0 being we’re doing absolutely everything against having a better life. 100 being we’re doing absolutely everything just right to have the perfect life. Truth is, we’re never on either end at any point, but somewhere in between.
Now, let’s put that scale from 0 to 100 on the X axis, and the Y axis will represent how good our life is. Draw a diagonal line up the middle (X=Y), and that shows us how a combination of our choices can make our life better or worse.
This line, however, only represents the average of an infinite number of data points. When we’re making the “right” choices, we only tend to have a better life. Even if most of the dots are near the line, there are always outliers.
Sometimes, we can be doing everything just right, but life still sucks. Some days, we’re not doing anything good for ourselves, and life seems to work out just right.
Every moment in your life is a data point. We’re just trying to make sense of this infinite amount of data, trying to figure out what our A, B, C, and so on are. The more data points you have, the more confident you’ll be of the equation for a better life.
So appreciate every moment of your life, because it’s a new data point.
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