#3. You stop being King Midas and become King Poop.
Sometimes, life has a dark and dismal sense of humor. And it seems like overnight, everything falls apart around you.
But it doesn’t.
Life warns you that something will change long in advance and many times.
What happens is that when luck smiles on you, you don’t want to listen. You live in constant denial to make the most of the good times without realizing that it is precisely this (looking the other way) that accelerates your life’s decay process.
I know it firsthand; I have hit rock bottom many times because I have not learned the lesson and repeatedly stumbled over the same stones.
So much so that I’ve learned to spot certain signs/patterns of behavior that occur months, even years, before it all goes to shit.
Here are three of those subtle signs (because you cannot see them when everything is going well) so you can modify the course of your life before you hit the ground.
1. You start living too much in Carpe Diem mode.
One of the signs that something is about to break in your reality is feeling that each day is so different from the last that it seems like you are living a different life.
Many will say this is Carpe Diem and the right way to live. I’m afraid I have to disagree.
When you live too much here and now, you get too involved in the present and stop seeing the curve balls that fate sends your way.
There is no tomorrow for you, so you live like a circus trapeze artist who doesn’t use a safety net for his acrobatics. And when plan A fails you, and it will fail you (because life is anything but static), you will have no plan B (safety net), and therefore, you will inevitably crash.
Living this way makes you take too high risks and lose respect and fear of reality.
Because bad things always happen to others, don’t they?
But it is not like that, and all the excesses to which the Carpe Diem way of life leads you end up taking their toll on you over time.
And you are not going to laugh at the face of time. It is the other way around. Time will laugh at you.
Time is patient and lies down on its couch to watch the movie of your life while it eats popcorn and waits for you to get your ass kicked.
2. You become selfish, but you think others are.
It’s funny, but when your life is about to go down the drain, you think you are the king of the world. And that reality distortion in your head makes you behave the opposite of how you should.
You think you know everything, and therefore you learn nothing.
You think you are more intelligent than others, and that’s why others applaud you: Your vanity grows and blinds you, and they can take advantage of you as if you were a child.
You value friends who are not friends but drunken buddies who will stop picking up the phone when things go wrong.
You get upset because your loved ones ask for favors that disrupt your life.
I, for example, thought that my mother, who worked three jobs and couldn’t make ends meet, was selfish when she called me on the phone to ask me for a favor. Because I had to live my life, and she was too old not to take responsibility for her bad decisions. — How wrong I was.
It’s incredible how quickly we forget the people who gave everything for us without asking for anything in return, not even a thank you.
That’s why when you feel like the king of the mambo, you are usually a ridiculous guy that many upstarts take advantage of. To top it all off, you are ashamed of the real friends and family that love you.
3. You stop being King Midas and become King Poop.
With the distance the years give, I now see my supposedly flamboyant youth. And behind the glamour, parties, and so many shiny things, I see the bitter truth.
I see a huge trail of victims of my behavior and selfishness.
I see broken relationships.
I see partners I betrayed.
I see mentors who wanted my good and from whom I walked away.
I see all the darkness surrounding my life when I thought everything was golden. I see how everything I touched withered. I see how instead of gold, I turned everything I undertook into shit.
So, if there is no concordance between reality and what you believe is happening, that is an obvious red flag that your life is about to change for the worse.
Because at that point, self-deception begins. Because at that point, you start to look for those responsible for your mistakes in the wrong places. Because at that point, you stop being responsible, and that’s usually the beginning of the end of all your social and work circles.
No one wants someone around who is disloyal. No one wants someone around who thinks their shit doesn’t smell. No one wants someone who always says it’s everyone else’s fault. No one wants someone around who always wants to be correct and doesn’t listen to anyone because they only want to impose their truth and listen to themselves.
I know, I was like that.
And by leaving or being gradually expelled from your groups, life becomes hostile.
So if you want some advice, practice humility and don’t let your life go to shit.
A virtual hug
AG
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