How To Keep Getting Back Up When Life Knocks You Down
Photo courtesy of Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
—Winston Churchill
There’s no doubt about it. Life gets in the way of our desires and our dreams, sometimes on an all-too-regular basis. And sometimes in some pretty nasty ways. I’m sure there are few people on the planet — if any — who have not known heartbreak, crushing disappointment and dashed hopes. I suspect they’re hanging out with the unicorns.
You might be one of those people who have been knocked back so many times, kicked in the head, slammed onto the pavement by one challenge after another, you’ve lost count. You could even feel like your life has been nothing but one long struggle. I used to feel like that so I understand what it’s like.
After a while, you might start to think there’s no point in getting up again because you just know something is going to shove you back down. It gets a little worse when you reach the point of thinking you can’t get back up again. You’re exhausted. Tired of the struggles. Fed up with swimming upstream your whole life and never getting anywhere.
But if you don’t get back up, what is there for you? If you keep yourself there on the pavement, flat out and fed up, giving up, not bothering, done trying, what kind of life is that?
You might ask, “Well, what’s the point of getting back up again, making the effort, trying yet again, when I know I’ll just end up back here?”
Do you? Are you sure about that? Have you forgotten about the times things finally went your way? Because they did. I can promise you that.
The point is, even if the over-arching picture looks or feels like you always end up slammed back onto the pavement, getting up again is the only way you have a chance of things improving.
Think of it like a slot machine. You put in your coin and pull the handle. Nope, didn’t win. Another coin, another pull. Nope. Another coin, pull again. Nope. And you’re thinking, “Just one more. Just one more. Odds are that this time, it’ll work. Once more. And once more. And once more.”
You can’t stand to walk away, knowing that with every pull of that arm, it is increasingly possible that the next one will be the winner. And if you walk away now, there’s a good chance that someone will sit down in your seat for that next pull and the machine will start spitting out tons of money — including all of your coins.
So you try again. Just this once. One more time. Maybe this will be the one…And eventually, there is the payoff. Eventually, the machine does cave and give up its stash of cash.
Well, life is like that, too. You try and you try and you try, try, try, and get no result, or only a little result or an almost result and you keep trying and being defeated or derailed.
But the only way you’re ever gonna hit that payoff and be rewarded for your patient and persistent attempts is to put in another coin and pull that handle yet another time.
This fascinating short video makes the point in another powerful way (it’s one of my favourite true stories ever):
Video on YouTube courtesy of Power of Mind
If you didn’t stop to check it out, please do. Or be sure to watch it at the end. It’ll blow your doors off.
While you’re busy feeling deflated and derailed, see if you can spot patterns in your attitudes or behaviours that are contributing to your efforts being thwarted repeatedly. Are you hanging out with people who are negative or who believe in their own failures? Do they “think small” and encourage you to do the same? Are you filling your own head with negative self-talk and self-destructive thoughts and language?
If you keep believing it will all go wrong, you’ll continue to set yourself up to make it happen and validate your beliefs — without even being aware of it.
Some of what flattens you will be related to external circumstances over which you have no control — the death of a partner, your employer going bankrupt and you’re out of a job, an Act of God that washes away your home in a flood.
But there are plenty of difficult circumstances that are in your control. How you choose to live your life, whether or not you choose to examine your attitudes, your behaviour and responses to the challenges you face, whether or not you want to understand where they come from and how they affect your life, and whether they need to change — and whether you follow through with that change.
These are the kinds of things that need to be tackled so that when you do pick yourself up again, you set yourself off on a better path than you were on previously. You improve your chances that one day Life will stop slamming you onto the pavement, or will at least tone it down to a tolerable level.
The only way you can ever have a chance for that to happen is if you get back up again and keep fighting for the life and the happiness you want. Lying flat out on the pavement will only get you squashed.
So get up — again. One more time. You can do it. Yes, I know it’s exhausting. Yes, I know you’re sick of it. Yes, I know you feel like everything you ever attempt will fail. Yes, I know you don’t want to try anymore. Yes, I know you think there’s no point.
But there is a point. You have a pulse. You’re breathing. That means you still have the opportunity to make improvements in your life, to change the things that you can, to accept the things over which you have no control, and to stop defining yourself and your life by everything that goes wrong. If you allow yourself to slide in a victim mentality, it’s “game over” for any shot at happiness.
Envision what you want for yourself and your life. See it, feel it, hold that vision in your heart and in your mind. Never let it go. And get back up again, damn it, whether you want to do it or not.
You deserve to give yourself another chance.
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Spiritual Arts Mentor and Master Teacher, Liberty Forrest, guides you in discovering who you are, why you’re here, and how to follow that path.
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