If you’re going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill
Life’s hard. Bad things will happen to you whether you like it or not. Life doesn’t have a soul or feelings. It doesn’t care if you’re a good person, a bad person or if you’re religious or not.
Life will kick you down at some point in your life and it’s up to you to decide how are you going to react when that happens. You could either lie in bed all day, depressed, saying why me?, or you could fight back and take your life back into your hands.
I am not saying that this is going to be easy – hell no, it’s going to be the hardest battle that you’ve fought in your life. When I lost my mother in 2011 I was devastated. I dropped out of college after the first semester and I stopped caring about anything. I lost motivation and I just existed, throwing all the goals and plans I had back then into the trash can.
It took me more than two years to fight back and to start taking my life back in hands, starting college and finding a job. So, no, it won’t be easy. It will be a battle that will take a lot of time, effort, blood and sweat. It would break your bones and it would crush your heart.
At the end of the day, however, you will come out as a stronger, more capable person, a warrior.
After that transition you’ll realize that you’re not the weak person you knew before. Your emotions and how you react to things would change significantly. You’ll see pain as something that just happens and as something that is part of life and living.
You’ll realize that good and bad are life’s own children and that you just can’t escape meeting them at some point in your life. You’ll meet the beautiful brunette, Good, and you’ll be happy to spend a lot of time with her.
But at times, you’ll have to meet the red-head, called Bad (also known as Pain, Depression and Loss), and you’ll just have to handle the meeting. You can’t escape those meetings as they aren’t optional!
Here are some tips I think would help you fight your own battles. I learned them the hard way and it took me years to do so.
You should know that tomorrow you’ll feel better.
Everything in life, no matter how bad, has an expiration date. I am not saying that you won’t feel pain after certain point of time, no. I am just saying that after a while you just somehow settle. You realize that you can’t change your current situation, so you finally decide to move on.
I know that I can’t bring my mother back. I know that now. However, it took me a few years of why me?, universe / God hates me!, there is a huge conspiration plot against me and etc.
Give yourself some time to heal. Just know that there are always situations you can’t change or influence in any way.
Lost someone you loved? Love them with all your heart, but realize that you can’t do anything more than that. Remember them, feed your heart with love for them, but move on.
Your girlfriend broke up with you? Well, she wasn’t for you to begin with. Find someone else that would treat you how you deserve. It would take time, but the final outcome – finding someone worthy of your time, will be worth it.
No matter what you’ve lost – family member, girlfriend, your dog or whatever, you must move on. The faster you get up and heal, the better. You’ll have more time to spend with valuable people and experiencing amazing moments.
Life, after all, is short and it doesn’t make sense to live it miserably by looking backwards. Life’s that happens now, at this exact moment. Tomorrow may not come, and yesterday is already a centuries away, so live now and make your life awesome.
Know that it’s not just you – bad things happen to everyone
Some people face challenges at a young age and others face the red-head later in their life. But the bottom line is that everyone, at some point or another, faces challenges. It’s not just you and life doesn’t have a plot against you.
Don’t fight your battles alone
We die alone, but we must live together. Don’t let depression and pain take you away from friends and family. They are here for you and you should value them and find time to spend with them.
There is nothing in life more important than family. You may be the richest, and the most powerful person out there, but who cares if you’re all alone? Who cares what you have if there is no one who will say to you Great job! I am so proud of you! Don’t underestimate the value of family!
Listen to motivational speakers and read motivational books and articles
I love listening to motivational speakers like Tony Robbins, Les Brown and Eric Thomas first thing in the morning. This routine of mine really helps me to concentrate and to keep my priorities sharp in my mind. Also it makes my day a lot more productive and fun.
Books like 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People , Think and Grow Rich , How to Win Friends and Influence People , The Power of Positive Thinking , You’re a Bad Ass are a great reads before bed.
Biographies of people like Elon Musk ( Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future ), Richard Branson ( Losing My Virginity ) and many, many more.
For articles, I would suggest you subscribe to Medium.com. It’s really an amazing place full of valuable articles about various topics, like motivation, tech, art, science – you name it, they have it.
Give things Time (the most important ingredient)
Time is the ultimate healer, but time takes… time. Bamboo needs a few years to grow, our planet Earth needed a few billion years to shape and become the habitable place we all know and live on. You needed one year to learn to walk and a few more to start doing simple math, guessing colors and finding logic in things.
Healing after any kind of trauma takes time. It’s nature’s way of doing its magic. Like Warren Buffett once said:
You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.
Warren Buffett
The ultimate coin we all pay life with is time. We need time to heal the same way we need time to become great at our profession, learning new skill, becoming an artist, a great writer, you name it. Time is at the center of everything, even in physics and the core of life itself.
Give time for things to heal and try your best to live a happier, simpler and fulfilling life in the mean time. It won’t be for long and you’ll be amazed at how great life is again 🙂
