I have noticed that the hard and easy times in life define us.
We have noticed from experience that when someone goes through a difficult time in their life, it really affects them. They often think about it and sometimes it can take years to resolve the pain and trauma. Some people never forgive the past and hold onto trauma their entire lives. It is clear that difficult times in life can affect someone’s personality.
What I think is less clear is that the easy times in life equally define a person’s character. I shared before that I watched a documentary called Drugs, Inc. One of the stories it shared is that Wall Street traders and people in the financial industry who made lots of money had big drug habits. So no doubt they are under stress, but also speaking truthfully, they are making a great deal of money. So their life should be pretty good. Yet they find that spending money on drugs makes them happier than other options. I am not judging them, just making my argument.
Similarly, people who are wealthy, or sex workers make a great deal of money and also have high incidences of drug use and suicide. It is interesting isn’t it, that when you think a good life consists of making money, that those who have money are often so unhappy.
My point here is that how people spend money when things are going well and things are easy says a lot about their character and personality. Money just allows habits to form that may not be helpful to us. I am not saying drug use is bad or good, I don’t believe in bad or good. I believe in helpful and unhelpful. Someone using drugs often finds some negative consequences to their life, and that is clearly unhelpful. Life is often an experiment, and I don’t blame people for making mistakes. It isn’t a fault of morality when someone uses drugs. Perhaps it is a fault of judgment, but you can learn and change and not do that anymore.
To me, becoming a drug user isn’t a problem anymore, and being rich is a problem. It can be both helpful and unhelpful at times, but everyone has their own path in life. Everyone has to learn from their mistakes. We all make mistakes, so perhaps our challenges and things that are unhelpful to us would be viewed negatively by others. As much as possible, being nonjudgmental helps others tremendously.
When things are average people can handle that. Most people don’t deal well with adversity or wealth. One of the interesting things about lottery winners is that most of them end up spending their millions and are worse off than before they won. Interesting isn’t it? Money often increases our problems when we look to it as the answer. When we see money is not the answer, then we start to become happy.
Don’t allow money or the abundance or lack of it to make your decisions in life. Lead with your values and even though times will be tough, you will find a joy you never knew existed.