What a day to write. As always, I post every Monday and Thursday. Sometimes I spend days researching my latest post, gathering data, reinforcing my assertions with statistics and facts and thoughtfully editing it for consumption.

Today was a little different, I have been managing my heavy load recently with a chip on my shoulder: taking care of my son, pushing myself at work, exercising vigorously, managing the Cash Chronicles Instagram account and maintaining the growing readership of this blog no matter what obstacles were thrown in my way.

With the exception of a few days, I have managed to consistently produce output for the Instagram page as well as this blog for almost 9 months now. Some days have been easy and some days have been hard. Today has been one of the harder days.

When I restarted this blog last December, I decided to take a different path and let the ideas and writing flow freely to be able to have my thoughts and my passion guide me rather than try to pander to what I think people want. I enjoy discussing economics and finance and have a passion for helping people in terms of personal finance. I also have found that there is a deep struggle within me that I think many people share: the struggle to push myself and produce on my passion.

The two are also linked, my experience the past few years has taught me that a lot of the different ways that people approach money and finance has to do with psychology and emotion rather than logic. I realized I have been trained from a very young age to separate money from emotions and value highly the long term effects of discipline and delayed gratification. In turn, the only way to achieve these things is to be driven by a strong motivation and confidence in one’s abilities. This is where the motivation comes in.

You can’t achieve discipline, have courage and drive without something deep down pushing you. I thought at times that I was not motivated, that I lacked a passion. Reflecting on it for many years has made me realize that I was living my fears not my dreams. I went from being a young man with hope in my eyes scrounging for every penny I could in the hope that one day it could be better, to plateauing as an older adult, where I think many find themselves: listless in the ocean, lacking meaning or direction in life and bobbing in the sea waiting for landfall to arrive.

When I write about motivation, when I write about drive and finding passion, what is pushing me is to share my struggles, even if they are minor, with a hopeful ear that others will know that they are not alone in their own daily struggles and that you can turn your struggles into a victories.

Back to Fainting

Hopefully you’ve made it this far because I haven’t even talked about fainting yet. I had been taking on so much in my life lately, I finally felt as if I was rising above the adversity and crushing it, stepping it up to the next level. I was becoming the worker and the leader that I wanted to follow.

Today I stumbled. For some reason all that I had been taking on caught up with me. The worries and the angst I thought I had beaten down, as well as the hopelessness that can accompany those feelings. All that seemed to have reached a crescendo where I couldn’t sleep a wink last night.

Combine that with lowering my calorie intake and you have a recipe for disaster. I managed to still wake up at 5am, but I struggled to get out of the house and get my son to daycare.

Once at work, I pushed myself to make it through the day but by 12pm I felt that odd sense I had felt only a few times before in my life: I am going to faint.

It is an important time at work, I am working on multiple items to be presented to the senior management of the large company where I work. Everyone is under pressure to perform and meet deadlines. This can’t be the time I buckle.

Before I fainted, I told my boss I didn’t feel well and I had to leave. It was time to throw in the towel. I ran through all the scenarios in my head: if I fainted at work, it would be worse for everyone: paramedics would come and it would take away from everyone else’s day and work.

If I made it home and fainted at home, I could potentially fall and hurt my son if he was near. What would he do if I was unconscious? I wouldn’t be able to help him. So I had to do the only thing left that was in my power: call his mother to get him from work, get in a cab and faint there.

So I did. I think the driver thought I was just drunk or was exhausted. I managed to come to before I arrived home and he didn’t think much of it.

I slept for a number of hours and faced a new challenge: I had yet to write my blog post. With all that went on today and all my failures, this post seemed inconsequential. I should be focused on resting and focused on getting better. This I did, but my motivation and my standards can’t get sick.

If no one reads this and no one else knows that I didn’t post today it will still matter because I will know that I didn’t.

After surviving the wave of my initial self pity, I looked through my phone contacts and picked out a few people that I knew had handled adversity. Real adversity. Friends that had been to war, been in jail or had people close to them die. This wasn’t a time to casually chat about how life is coming at me, I needed to tap into my network of inspiration.

I did just that. My network pushed me to do what I can, take care of myself and admitted their own failings as of late. I wasn’t alone. Neither are any of you that get inspired by this blog.

That’s when I knew it was time to write. What better time to document then when I am feeling at my absolute lowest and dealing with circumstances that are out of my control to write it down and share it with other people?

Break the Cycle

It would hardly be a Cash Chronicles Post without some data and my reaching out to friends made me think of how many people may feel lonely and like they are the only one dealing with all that swirls around them.

If you are dissatisfied with your life, you and only you, have the power to change that. I write because I don’t want to become dissatisfied. I have dignity in the fact that I hold to my own standards and deadlines for myself and no one else can give that to me other than me. Why do I know this matters? Because the data says it does. A Pew study on those that are dissatisfied with their life found that they were about 4 times as likely to say they felt lonely.

In addition, those poor and those not in a relationship tend to feel lonely much more often.

My interpretation of the above is that it’s a vicious circle: not holding yourself to a higher standard and acting upon it leads to dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction can lead you to habits like pessimism and negativity that will turn people away from you and blind economic opportunities to you. This then leads to loneliness produced by these factors which reinforces what you already thought about yourself.

This doesn’t have to be your forever. Part of what helped me push through and whether the storm today was what one of my friends who is a veteran told me: you know this is temporary, push through these feelings. Deal with them. Let yourself feel them. Then let them pass and move on. Achieve your greatness.

Don’t Give Up

Source: reddit

I still remember that my father had this image on his desk at work and although his delivery is not always strong, it exemplified a belief in himself.

It speaks to the hopelessness that sometimes can grip us. If that frog were to let hopelessness win in that moment, it would be all over. Just like the frog, I can’t let hopelessness win.

I fainted at work today. It was on an important day. I couldn’t take care of my son and I ended up fading away from the world for a time. A bad day doesn’t define me. It doesn’t define you. We don’t have to let bad days win.

Tomorrow I will walk into work and can achieve on the same level I did as when I was riding high. This post proves it to me.

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