Upon reflection I've come to see that there is an active resistance or 'push-back' from the universe inversely proportional to your efforts. I guess you could call it entropy.
One should seek to continually make incremental gains from period to period in life. I find that I've put myself in an objectively better position from where I was a year ago the same moment, and while by no means impressive, these gains should compound over time.
It seems it's all too easy to spiral down if you get in a bad rut.