In my head, I was supposed to be driving the car of my dreams, running a successful business, living in luxury, and thriving.
In reality, I was in my early 30s, walking to the laundromat in the rain because I didn’t own a car, then coming home to an apartment with a hole in the roof that turned my bathroom and hallway into a swimming pool every time it rained.
Oh, and the apartment had started growing black mold.
Things were going great.
I barely had enough money to eat. My washing machine was broken. And I had basically none of the things I’d imagined having by that age.
But there was one thing I couldn’t blame on my landlord, my bank account, or bad luck:
I hadn’t FULLY committed to building the business I kept dreaming about.
I wanted the business. I thought about it. I worked on it. I imagined where it could take me.
But there’s a difference between wanting something and deciding:
This is what I’m doing with my life.
I hadn’t made that decision yet.
I wasn’t responsible for every shitty thing happening to me.
But I was responsible for what I did next.
Being Broke Doesn’t Make You a Loser
From the outside, I’m sure I looked like a broke loser.
And actually, they would’ve been half right.
I was broke.
But I wasn’t a loser.
At least not by my definition.
A loser isn’t somebody going through a shitty period. It’s somebody who has given up.
You can lose your money. Lose your car. Live in a shitty apartment. Walk through the rain to wash your clothes. Look around and realize your life bears absolutely no resemblance to the one you imagined for yourself.
None of that means you’re finished.
But if you allow those circumstances to convince you there’s no point trying anymore?
Now you’ve got a problem.
That was the one thing I refused to do.
Positive thinking wasn’t going to patch the hole in my roof or put money in my bank account. But I could decide whether those things were going to break my spirit.
They weren’t.
I Started Looking for the Angle
When your life sucks, it’s pretty easy to spend all day thinking about how much your life sucks.
I certainly had plenty of material.
No car. No money. Broken washing machine. Leaking roof. Black mold.
So I started looking for the angle.
At least I have a roof over my head.
Sure, the roof had a fucking hole in it, but details.
I don’t have a car, but I have two working legs.
At least I can walk to the laundromat.
And one of my favorites:
All of this nonsense is going to make great content one day.
Turns out I was right about that one.
I learned to laugh at some of the bullshit. I started looking at my circumstances the way a comedian looks at his life.
Where’s the joke?
What can I learn from this?
Can I get anything useful out of it?
It didn’t make the problems disappear.
It just made them easier to carry.
Gratitude Doesn’t Mean Accepting a Shitty Life
I wasn’t grateful that my roof leaked.
I wanted the fucking roof fixed.
I wasn’t grateful to be broke. I wanted money. I wasn’t grateful that I had to walk everywhere. I wanted a car.
And I definitely wasn’t grateful for the black mold growing in my apartment.
Gratitude didn’t mean pretending those things were secretly wonderful.
It meant refusing to let everything I lacked make me blind to everything I still had.
That’s a big difference.
I could appreciate what I had and still want more.
In fact, that’s exactly what I did.
I had two working legs. I had a roof—even if it was a shitty one. I had my brain. I had opportunities. I was still alive.
So I could either spend my time complaining about everything I didn’t have or start doing more with what I did.
And eventually I had to admit something:
I didn’t need to want my dream more.
I needed to commit to it more.
Maybe It Was a Test
Looking back, I’ve always thought of that period as some kind of test.
Maybe God was testing me. Maybe the universe was testing me.
Maybe life was just being an asshole.
I don’t know.
I chose to treat it like a test.
That way, instead of asking “Why is this happening to me?” I could ask:
“Okay. What am I going to do about it?”
Every shitty situation became something I could learn from. Every setback became something I had to figure out. And every miserable experience eventually became a story.
I started doing a little mental alchemy.
Take shit. Turn it into gold.
Sometimes the gold was a lesson. Sometimes it was a better decision. Sometimes it was nothing more than a funny story I could use years later in an article like this one.
But I wanted to get something out of it.
Mindset Isn’t Enough
There’s one important part of this that I don’t want you to misunderstand.
You can’t gratitude-journal your way out of a life you refuse to change.
I know because for a long time I loved thinking about my future. I imagined the business, the money, the cars, the freedom.
I wasn’t doing nothing.
But I wasn’t fully committed either.
Eventually I had to go from:
“This is something I really want.”
to:
“This is what I’m doing with my life.”
The gratitude helped keep my head straight.
But I still had to move.
A positive mindset won’t build your business. Visualization won’t acquire skills. And God isn’t going to descend from the heavens and update your fucking LinkedIn profile.
You still have to do something.
The point of protecting your mindset during the dark days is to keep yourself mentally alive enough to do something about them.
Protect Your Spirit
Maybe you’re going through your own dark days right now.
I don’t know what you’re dealing with, and I’m not going to tell you your problems aren’t real.
Mine were real too.
But look around and figure out what you still have to work with.
Maybe you have internet access. Maybe you have a smartphone. Maybe you have somebody who gives a shit about you. Maybe you have a safe place to sleep.
Maybe all you have is another day to take a swing.
Fine.
Start there.
You don’t need to pretend everything is wonderful. And you don’t need to sit around describing everything that’s wrong either.
Change what you can.
Laugh when you can find the joke.
Use what you still have.
And when you finally know what you’re supposed to be doing, commit to it.
The Dark Days Don’t Last Forever
I can laugh about some of this stuff now.
I can laugh about walking to the laundromat in the rain. I can laugh about the indoor swimming pool my landlord generously installed in my hallway every time it rained.
It wasn’t particularly funny at the time.
But I survived it.
And eventually things changed.
Then other dark days came.
Those changed too.
That’s something I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older: periods of your life that feel permanent usually aren’t.
So if things suck right now, don’t waste the experience.
Get whatever you can out of it.
Learn something. Change something. Laugh at something. Turn it into a story if nothing else.
But whatever you do:
Don’t let the bastards break your spirit.
Your circumstances can take plenty from you.
Don’t voluntarily give them that too.
— Uncle Blayde