We never feel so badly, the push for change, than when we have crashed to the depths of despair.
We all know that rock bottom is an awful feeling place. It’s the lowest of the low, the ultimate destruction of your life as you know it. Your world crashes down all around you, crushing your self-worth, pulverizing your hope, and leaving you with self-loathing guilt and shame. You feel like a complete failure.
Hitting rock bottom can be a terrible, traumatic life experience that can cause severe emotional turmoil, and recognizing you’re there is the first step towards recovering from it. In my own experience, rock bottom was a horrible ride that delivered me to a wonderful destination.
Rock bottom is losing yourself.
Finding yourself at rock bottom usually means that you’ve lost something significant. Most eminently yourself. You have lost your self-respect, your self-confidence, your sense of importance and your feeling of belonging. You’re feeling degraded, worthless, lonely, and you’ve placed insurmountable blame upon yourself. You might feel like you just can’t face another day.
But what if you didn’t have to see it this way?
In a 2008 commencement address at Harvard University, J.K Rowlings spoke of hitting rock bottom. After being struck with a divorce and ensuing poverty, 7 years out of university she realized that she had met her biggest fear. This gave her hope, determination, and motivation to succeed as one of the best authors of our time.
And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
-J.K Rowlings
If you change your perspective there’s an alternative view.
Stop looking around you at the emptiness of the loss and view it as an opportunity for tremendous growth. You can rebuild something even better than what was there before. You have this opportunity to design the life of your dreams, and there’s nothing in the way now. Reach for hope, and search for purpose, remembering the dreams you once had, but left behind for some reason or another.
Before you lay that first brick, you must come to terms with yourself. Although it’s uncomfortable, it’s extremely important to acknowledge what you have done, and how that makes you feel. Allowing yourself to observe your emotions can be extremely fulfilling, and it’s okay to feel how you do.
Your rock bottom – your responsibility.
Acceptance is essential to your healing and your growth. There is no place for blaming others in this process because this is your story, and ultimately your decisions have placed you here. You may have been a victim in your circumstance, but accepting your role in the situation is key to your growth. You can’t change what has happened, but you can accept it and learn from it. In learning this lesson you’ll gain experience and strength. You’ll be given the gift of knowing what you do not want for your life, but even more importantly, what you do want.
After coming to terms with yourself, be sure to identify the lesson. What was it, what did you learn from it, and how will this impact your decisions in the future? What will you do differently from this point on? If you can’t identify the lesson, then how can you be sure it won’t sneak back in again? And if you can’t find something to change, then where will you find your hope to rebuild? You will be selling yourself short and missing out on an amazing opportunity for personal and spiritual growth, if you don’t ascertain what you’ve learned.
This experience can go very deep, exposing feelings and beliefs you didn’t know you had. This allows you to remove perspectives that do not serve you, and start establishing ones that do. And now, rock bottom becomes your new foundation.
Solid foundation – laying the first brick.
You’ve done the hard work at this point. By now you know what you do not want, and you have a clear picture of what you do want. You’ve accepted that this is where you are and have the hope and motivation to arrive where you want to be. You know what your new life looks like, so now it’s time to start building it.
Your new thoughts, ideas, and feelings become your beliefs. These beliefs create your new mindset. Your mindset is the total sum of your beliefs, the I can, or I can’t, the I will, or I won’t. And your mindset is what fuels your motivation to succeed. Pay close attention to what you are feeding your mind and make sure that your new beliefs about yourself and your goals, align with what you aspire to achieve.
Your rock bottom is your new foundation, and every brick you place upon it has a purpose. These bricks are the future walls that protect you from the past mistakes you’ve made and learned from. Because you now know what they look like, you won’t allow them in again.
You can only go up from here! Each brick you lay, is a great achievement, and these achievements are your motivation to keep building. You’re going to find that you have built something stronger and more resilient than you ever had in the past. You’ll have built the castle you dreamt of all along.
We all make mistakes; I call it growing.
Congratulations on your growth, you’ve survived a traumatic experience. You can now learn from it and rebuild upon it. Isn’t growth a beautiful thing? 🖤
