Natural High, Natural Low - Avoid Mistakes With Both

Welcome to the Second Mix Podcast , where we reflect revise and remix our lives. I am Matthew Bennett and it is great to be here today. 

The Screwtape letters by CS Lewis is just a fascinating book. It's about an experienced (for lack of a better term) mentor demon named Screwtape, who's teaching a new or fledgling demon, Wormwood, how to manipulate humans. If you haven't read it, it is fascinating. I would check it out. I'm going to quote one of the lessons that Screwtape is teaching wormwood. 

He says, “Humans are amphibians, half spirit and half animal. As spirits, they belong to the eternal world, but as animals, they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions and imaginations are in continual change - for, to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation. The repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back a series of troughs and peaks.

I love CS Lewis and it's a great book to read regardless of how you feel about any religion - because CS Lewis was a genius when it came to delving into human nature and calling out the rough spots in humans. Believing his “why” is up to you, but it's hard to deny his knowledge of emotion and motivation. It's impossible to deny that we all go through ups and downs. 

The interesting thing here is that whatever state we're in, we naturally think that we're going to stay in that state. And that creates tension for us, whether we're up or we're down. In fact, if I'm up and feel good about life, then when I get down, it's disappointing and I wonder, what did I do wrong? What happened? Or I blame someone else or something else for this down period that I'm going through. And when I'm down, I feel like I'm going to be in that state forever.

So I get even more down because it doesn't feel good to be there. It feels like I'm in this for the long haul. So in the end it looks like this:

When I'm, when I'm living in natural high, I think I'm going to be there forever. And when I fall down to a low, I say, “this sucks. I'm going to be here forever.” What we rarely take a hard look at is the natural occurrence of ups and downs in life. We're momentary creatures. The past doesn't really exist to us and neither does the future. So what we feel right now is all we feel. One of my personal development heroes. Jim Rohn, had a lot to say on the subject, but I want to narrow it down to a couple of really important lessons that I learned from him. He said that life is like the seasons and he compares each season in our lives.

So the spring is opportunity - planting the crops. The summer is adversity, protecting and defending  what we're growing. The fall is the harvest. And then the winter is the dark and downtime. We all have winters in our lives. Seasons where nothing seems to be working out. Life feels boring, or at least it feels unexciting. It feels unproductive and bleak. We have physical winters. We have emotional winters. This is the downtime in your life. And it doesn't necessarily line up with the winters that nature gives us. The frequency of the downtime is actually faster. The ups and downs, we feel are constant and they happen a lot faster than the actual season of winter. You can choose to be sad that a downtime is coming, or you can choose to be excited that an uptime is happening. That choice is yours and yours alone. 

When you're in a winter, instead of lamenting that you're in the middle of winter, you have the choice to use the winter to get better, to get stronger and to get wiser. So when you are in a winter, what I do is I read the books, take seminars, classes, work on my skills, work on my gifts. I take time to reflect on past wins past losses. During a winter, become a student of your own life. You can use the winter to improve. You can use it to grow, use it, to improve, use it to become more than you are. 

Or you could watch Netflix and eat potato chips and make excuses thinking of other reasons why your life is so hard. That choice is yours also. 

And this next thing from Jim Rohn comes from something he called his Ant Philosophy. It's a great philosophy. Someday, I will talk about the entire thing. But one thing ants do is they think winter all summer long. So the entire summer, they keep thinking, “we won't be here long.” We better get ready for winter the entire summer. Then they're out, collecting everything they need to get through the winter. Ants understand that now is temporary. And that winter is coming on. 

 The reverse side of that is ants also think summer, all winter long. During that season, they also say, “we're not going to be here long.” They know that spring and summer are coming again. And that is a beautiful attitude to have. So when I mix Jim Rohn with CS Lewis, I come up with my own philosophy that sounds like this: Every time that I'm experiencing an uptime - a time when I'm excited about life and opportunity and love and spring and summer, I drink it in and make sure that I remember the experience because I know that winter is coming.

 I don't ever want to be surprised again by another winter in my life. I want to be ready. And every time I'm in the middle of a winter and things look bleak, I think of the ants and say, “I'm not going to be here long. Another season is coming.” And then I get to work, improving myself. I double my efforts to learn and grow and get wiser and more skillful. I stop myself from the poisonous human habits of complaining and blaming. I realize that everyone goes through winters. I'm not the only person. I also reflect on my life. What I've done, right, what I've done wrong, where I screwed up and where I've been successful. I become a serious student of my own life. 

If nothing else, take these two things with you: 

1.  If you're experiencing an up or a down, keep remembering this phrase, “I won't be here long,” and then make the best of the up or the down, make the absolute best of it. And to make the best of winter is 
2. During the winter, get wiser, gets stronger, get better, and get more skillful. You can do all of those things. There is nothing holding you back from learning. 

I'm going to leave you with a quote from Jim Rohn that changed my life for the better. 

“Don't wish things were easier. Wish you were better. Don't wish for fewer problems, wish for more skills. Don't wish for fewer challenges. Wish for more wisdom.”

I'm going to be back on Monday. Thank you so much for listening. If you like what you're hearing, please subscribe to this podcast. Give me five stars wherever and whenever you can. If you know someone else who's going to find this information valuable to their lives, please join my mission and spread the word about what I'm doing here. 

I want to make entrepreneurs more successful by teaching effective personal development ideas. And before you disqualify yourself as an entrepreneur, regardless of who signs your paycheck, you are self-employed you get to decide. I want to eliminate ineffective thinking and stop it from holding entrepreneurs back from the success that they want. 

Check out my website. secondmix.net, where you can get updates or get in touch with me - and find me on all social channels at secondmix21. Until next time, keep reflecting, revising, and remixing your life.