Why Your Life and Money are Directional

When I was in high school, there were a few people I sometimes hung out with. We would sometimes skip classes, go to town, play pool, and have drinks.

At that age, it felt good to rebel a bit. When we were together, we were loud and annoying. But we thought it was cool.

I was talking to my best friend last week about how most of those cool guys ended up as losers. My friend Quincy grew up in a different city, but he also had the same type of friends.

Those guys started their adult lives on a downtrend. They didn’t go to college, took low-wage jobs, went to clubs every week, had unstable relationships, racked up debt, and so forth.

In life, things usually follow a trend. The trend is mostly going upward, and things are getting better, or it’s downward, and things only get worse. Even when things are moving sideways, it often feels like a downtrend because everything else around you seems to keep moving up.

Around the same time I was in high school, my parents made me aware of this important lesson. They say I did okay in school, but they knew I had more potential. They didn’t want me to follow the trend of the people around me.

So they continuously supported me to prioritize education. They knew it well. For both of my parents, life was hard. They saw the older family members degrading every year.

People who started their adult life off on the wrong foot ended up sick, addicted, depressed, in nearly all cases. While it’s common that people turn their lives around in Hollywood movies, it’s very uncommon in reality.

People don’t change their lives overnight. While it’s good to see people who change for the better and maintain that change, it’s not as common as we want it to be.

There are trends everywhere you look

In the stock market, you often find companies that are on the decline. They might have posted strong growth for years, but if they stop growing, Wall Street tends to drop them like a brick.

When a stock is on a downward trend, there is no bottom in sight. A stock that’s trading at $200, can go to $100, and people think, “Wow, that’s half the price. What a bargain. How low…