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Sometimes it’s really hard to see this, but the downs in life make the ups so much better. When things are tough and you’re struggling through something, the euphoria on the other side can be exhilarating.

I saw this interesting post on LinkedIn and thought it had so many parallels to having a Rich Life. First and foremost, the nerdy engineer in me thought it was the coolest example of how physics can trick us.

But mostly I thought about how life has its twists and turns and highs and lows. Our journey is never exactly how we planned it, but, if we stick with it, things usually work out in the end.

Brachistochrone curve

This is the exact phenomenon that is happening with the marbles in the video above. It’s a little nerdy but hang with me.

The Brachistochrone curve or curve of fastest descent is an arc between two points. It is where a ball can slide down with only gravity helping it and can reach the other point faster than a ramp connecting the two points with a straight line.

Now if you’re truly interested in all of the math, you can read the Wikipedia page and see all of the calculus and derivations. For others, you can just assume that your eyes are not lying to you and that no tricks are being played in these videos.

3 Reasons Why the Downhills are the Best Parts

First, when you’re in the downhill or at the bottom, that is where we learn from our mistakes. People view being down as having nothing.

“I just broke up with my girlfriend and now I’m alone.” “I just got scammed out of money. I’m so stupid.” “I just got in a fender bender. Why can’t people drive right?!”

All of these things can make your day pretty crappy. But that’s just going down the hill. Once all of that happens, we have a great opportunity. This is where we can learn from what happened and start to go up the hill on the other side. Or we can continue our negativity and spiral further down.

Those lessons that we learn propel us up the hill faster than we ever thought possible going further and further until we need to learn another lesson. Then down the other side we go.

Second, at the bottom is where we have the most momentum. Like a slingshot, we can thrust ourselves higher by channeling all of the brokenness we feel toward our one goal.

When we are down in the dumps, we have nothing to lose. That is a very powerful thing. Your back is against the wall and the only way to go is forward. This forces us to think about our problems in different ways, outside-the-box, or any other cliché you want.

Why do some people have more confidence than others? Are people just born with it? What is overconfidence? How is being confident related to being humble?

All I’m saying is when you’re forced to pick yourself up by your bootstraps, and you want it bad enough, nothing will stop you from getting up the next hill.

Third, and this is probably my favorite, it’s the thought that we’ve been here before. In the marble video above, it almost looks like the marble is just chugging along not panicking during each bump in the road.

I know that’s weird to think that a marble has feelings but it looks like it’s calm, steady, and just doing its business. Going much faster through the course than the marble on the straight path.

In our lives, we’ve hit many bumps in the road. Some are bigger than others but we’ve all had them. And because you now remember that you’re had some hard times in your life, and you’ve survived (I’m guessing that’s true because you’re reading this now 😊 ) then you know that you can get through other bumps that may come your way.

But This One’s Different

For some reason, our brains always gravitate to think that this issue is different than any we have seen before. This problem is unique and is probably the biggest one we will ever face in our lives.

While it may be true, more times than not, this current obstacle facing us is probably not the biggest one we’ve faced. That being said, a pandemic is something I hope we never have to face again.

But, there have been more startups since June 2020 than ever before, according to the U.S. Business Formation Statistics. And since the pandemic, I know I have exercised better personal health habits than I have ever before. Believe it or not, I’m physically healthier than I was before March 2020.

I haven’t gotten a cold since then and am more mindful to wash my hands or use the many hand sanitizer bottles that restaurants have provided to keep their customers safe. That would never have happened if not for the pandemic.

Physics: The Study of Nature

The world around us is pretty amazing. And the best part is that we have very little control over it. That is so helpful to realize that I keep reminding myself every day that the only thing I can control is myself.

I love to study physics and why things happen the way they do. Like why does a grape hit the ground at the same time as a bowling ball when dropped from the same height at the same time?

Almost all physical phenomenon has correlations to our daily lives. After all, we are part of the natural world. We just have to be comfortable living in its wild roller coaster ride.