Show-up Sunday — How to handle hard times.

Welcome to #9 of Show-Up Sunday! 👋

Reading time: 6 min 22 sec

Everything started 2 months ago...

It was a beautiful day on Monday.

I woke up with my eyes hurting and feeling a bit dizzy.

I thought I hadn't slept enough like always and I said I’m going to be fine.

Throughout the day the pain became worse and worse, so I decided to go to the high school infirmary.

I got to the infirmary, and I told them what is happening.

The doctor said to the nurse:

"Let's take his blood pressure."

He prepared the measurement device. Put it on me and after a few moments it happened...

The device started to make alarm sounds. I couldn't see the measurement, but I knew that it was bad when I heard that sound and when I saw the nurse's face.

That sound stopped. For a few seconds, it was so silent that it was scary when suddenly I heard:

"We need to send him to the hospital! Right now!"

I started to worry. I asked the doctor what was happening.

"Your blood pressure is too high for your age. Don't worry, your life is not in danger, but you need to go to the hospital so they can lower the blood pressure."

It was bad. Very bad for my age. It was 160/100.

Here's a blood pressure chart so you can understand how bad it was.

For the next weeks, they put me on different medical tests, so they could find out what was happening in my body.

The results came out...

"You've been diagnosed with Hypertension Stage 2, and because of it you won't be able to pursue a military career...”

The rest is history…

Well, something like this can always happen.

Life is totally unpredictable and it's tough.

Hard times can come anytime, and we can't choose what we're going through.

But there's one thing we choose...

And this is how we handle them.

You must have heard this:

"You're responsible for everything in your life."

There're problems that you don't choose and you're not responsible for. For example:

• Where you were born.

• A genetic medical problem.

• Death of a loved one.

As I said, you're not responsible for things like this.

But this is a big BUT...

You're responsible for how you treat the situation and how you handle it.

It's not easy to go through moments like this and it's tough to handle them.

That's how life is. It's not easy at all. If anybody tells you that life is easy, that's a big lie.

It's beautiful, but it's not easy at all.

Yeah, it wasn't easy and funny at all when I heard that I have medical issues and because of them I can't continue with the military career after I spent 4 years in a military college.

It took me 2 or 3 days to get back on track.

All because of my mental framework and how I look at hard times.

Today I'll show you the framework and how to use it when something unpredictable and bad happens in your life:

How to deal with hard times?

Well, everyone has to develop his method.

I won't tell you that my framework will change your life completely. Most probably it won't.

Everyone is different. Everyone's perception and perspective of the world are different.

What works for me perfectly, for you probably won't work at all.

"But Savu, then why should I continue to read this newsletter then?"

You see, to find what works, you need to have a starting point. It's trial and error.

You find a framework or a method, and if you like it then, you test it and you model it until you create your method. Until you find what works for you.

In this newsletter, I want to give you a framework that can represent the starting point of your method.

Don't expect to find here something new, or something that you haven't heard about it. No, it's not sexy at all, but it works just fine for me.

I had lots of hard times when I just wanted to give up. But this framework helped me to get over them and to continue to chase my dreams.

Let's jump on it.

The perspective framework

The first phase - Acceptance

When something comes into your life, and you can't continue on the current road you will be shocked.

Like I was when I discovered that I have hypertension.

Before we dive deeper, you have to understand 1 simple thing:

It's completely normal to feel like this.

This is the first step you need to take when something bad happens.

Embrace it.

Don't run away from it because it will get worse and worse.

For example, after I heard the bad news, I took 1-2 days to reflect on what happened and to calm down.

What activities I did do in those days?

I journaled. On paper or I was recording videos just talking about how I was feeling.

I took walks to clear my head and to spend time by myself.

And I meditated for around 30 minutes per day.

I tried to spend as little time as possible on social media.

I was spending time alone to face what happened and to become aware of how big the problem was.

Because most of the time the problems we have are not as big as we think they are. We tend to exaggerate all the time.

Taking time to reflect on it, will solve this and you'll understand the gravity of the problem.

You don't have to do exactly what I did, just keep this in your mind:

You can do whatever you want as long as you don't binge on alcohol and food while wasting all your day watching Netflix and scrolling on social media.

It'll make everything worse so just don't do that.

Let's move to the next phase.

The second phase - Finding the new path

When something bad happens, the path that you were on is demolished in front of your eyes.

The future that you believed you would have, is no longer available.

When I got diagnosed with hypertension, I could no longer pursue the military path that I was already on for 4 years.

So, my future in the military was gone.

This was my case.

Let's say your girlfriend cheated on you.

Now, you have to break up with her.

So, your future with her is gone.

It's not like she died, but she won't be by your side anymore.

You feel like you lost the future when in reality you didn't lose anything.

I didn't lose anything.

Why?

Because you can't lose something that you haven't had.

We don't own the future.

We can create a plan for the future, you can imagine what our future will look like, and work to get there, but it's not something that we own.

It's not promised.

That future was only in your mind.

The only thing we own is the present moment. That's it.

Your life journey is literally like a huge maze. A maze where you can encounter blocked paths.

When this happens, keep in mind that around that blocked paths are hidden paths. Maybe even better than the path that you were already on.

You just need to stop thinking about the blocked way and look for the hidden one.

It will take some time, but there's always one. No matter what.

There's only 1 case when the game it's over...

That's when you die.

Otherwise, all the other blocked paths have a hidden path that you can take and make your life better.

Ok, my future as a military is blocked. But because I didn't focus on the lost path, I immediately noticed there was a much better way.

Now I can go all in with writing and working towards building my business.

Ok, your future with your girlfriend is blocked. But you now have more time for yourself, for your business and to work on your dreams.

Just a quick example.

It will take some time, but there's always one. No matter what

There's only 1 case when the game it's over...

That's when you die.

Otherwise, all the other blocked paths, have a hidden path that you can take and probably can make your life even better than before.

This was the framework.

As I said it's not something new or amazing, it's just my way to deal with hard times.

I called it the perspective framework because it's all about perspective. You just need to adjust the way you look at the problem. Nothing else.

First, you accept the problem and then you shift your perspective on it to find a new path.

Not sexy, but it helped me a lot over the years.

I had moments when I felt complete down, but since I've discovered this way to look at things my life has improved significantly.

I hope that it will help you at least to get an idea of how you can handle the future hard times that come in your life.

This was today's newsletter overall.

It's my longest piece of writing ever and I'm proud of what came out.

So, I hope that you enjoyed it and found it useful.

No matter what you're going through, don't forget:

Show up daily and make your life worth living.

Adios amigos.