The 3-Word Phrase That Has Always Helped Me Through Bad Times
And can help you as well
The past two weeks have been bad for me. Pretty bad.
I lost my grandpa to COVID. My fitness regimen went to the dogs. I had an altercation with a loved one. I relapsed after 2 months of abstaining from porn. Mindless social media scrolling became the norm and my productivity hit rock bottom.
Well, with the pandemic around, nobody’s having a great time.
In my country India, though, covid’s raging — tens of thousands dying every day, lockdowns everywhere, a dire shortage of hospital beds and oxygen cylinders. And to top it off, getting a vaccine slot has become a “fastest fingers first” game.
Given the highly unpredictable nature of life, adversity can strike when we least expect it to. There’s no way to magically erase hard times from our life but there are ways to find solace in them.
And a simple three-word phrase helps me do that every single time.
Bad Times Always Precede Good Ones
Life is like a sine wave that rises above the axis every time it dips below it. So every period of suffering precedes one of bliss.
The past two weeks were awful, but the two before them were some of the best of my life.
And the sine wave is again shifting, as today was an excellent day — I got in a superb workout, took a cold shower, had a wholesome intellectual conversation with a friend, and am now writing my second article of the day.
“Life is like a sine wave that rises above the axis every time it dips below it.”
What’s heartening is that — the longer and worse the dip of the sine-wave, the longer and better would be the coming peak or good time.
The bad times cannot and will not go on forever. And in hard times, the phrase that reminds me and can remind you of this is “This shall pass”
A Hugely Overlooked Benefit of Hard Times
What most of us wish right now is for the pandemic to end and get back to living a normal life. Yet, how many of us were happy with our “normal” lives 2 years back?
That’s the thing with hard times or adversity — they make us appreciate the good ones.
It takes a minus to appreciate the plus. A stale sausage after days of starvation, a clear head after a severe headache, a minor success after multiple failures, or being able to pee after holding it in for hours — they all feel like bliss.
As the saying goes, “It takes losing something to realize its value.” It takes being unhappy to understand what it means to be happy and going through bad times to appreciate the good ones.
And therefore bad times, suffering, and unhappiness are essential in life.
Final Words
When the going is hard, take heart to the fact that it won't last forever and good times are just around the corner.
Say to yourself, “This shall pass!” and remember that it’s thanks to the harsh times that we can truly relish the good ones.
“It takes a minus to appreciate the plus.”
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