What do you do when things are tough? Not tough like at the gym. Not tough like on the stairs. This is something else entirely. I mean tough as in a situation. When everything piles up, when there's a total overload, when there's been a failure. Hell if I know. I suggest crying. Crawling into bed, eating sandwiches, and telling your wife or husband how unfair the world is.
Almost every film — especially the legendary ones — is about a character's transformation.
Someone's parents die (Batman, Time), a theater they saved for their whole life burns down (Sing, The Greatest Showman), they get fired (The Wolf of Wall Street, The Pursuit of Happyness), their partner leaves (any film), their parents don't understand them (The Little Mermaid, Brave) — and so on. It's precisely the overcoming of hardship that makes these films worth watching.
The only path forward is more attempts.
Get out of bed and make one more attempt.
Here's what I've seen in thousands of people who've gone through crisis: those who got back up — not because they felt motivated, but because they made a decision — those are the ones who built real lives. Motivation is overrated. Decision is everything.
A crisis is not the end. It's the plot point where the movie gets interesting. The question is: are you the main character who gets back up, or a side character who disappears after the first act?
The answer is always the same: get up, do one thing, then another. That's the entire plan.
