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My life is over.
It's such an extreme phrase.
But it's a feeling that so many people have, not just once, but multiple times in life.
You might be one of them.
There may feel like nothing worse than when you've been mortified in front of others, or you've received the worst news imaginable, or something else happens of equally devastating significance.
You feel like your life, really and truly, is over.
But all is not lost. Far from it.
Because great wisdom has been gleaned from awful events.
I've distilled the key lessons below in a short list.
Read this list whenever you need to.
It will remind you about how important it is to keep going.
Important Reasons / Reminders That Your Life Is Not Over
You Have Hidden Strength
Guess what?
I know something about you.
I know that you have been through difficult experiences before.
And I know that you kept going.
How do I know this?
Because you have hidden strength.
We all do.
Hidden strength is the latent power that only comes to the surface when terrible events happen. It's power reserved for only the toughest moments.
The very strange--and unfair--thing about life is that we all have vast reserves of power that only become actualized when we go through the worst moments of our lives.
You need the bad to see the good.
You need the bad to experience the good--good that you are capable of bringing about.
The Strange Thing About "Life Is Over" Moments
If there's one thing I know, it's that the universe has a very odd sense of humor.
I've been through my share of terrible moments--my mom's mental health crisis, having open-heart surgery at 24, months of insomnia and major depression--and I always thought I would never get through those moments.
But something interesting happens when you are able to look back on the events after you're longer immersed in them.
The events start to change. Perspective widens. And it all begins to make sense.
At least for me, when I look back on my life, I can see the totality of it. I can see things that I couldn't see before--that I wasn't able to see before--when I was in the middle of the life-is-over events.
The same is most likely true for your own life.
What can you see now that you couldn't see before?
How are you different now from how you were before?
If life is a tapestry, you're the moving thread, always flowing and connecting old experiences to the ones you're going through right now.
Experiences connect to experiences, and suddenly you have a realization that you've never had before.
Quite Possibly The Most Important Realization You Can Have
When you're in the thick of it, when you're going through one of the worst moments of your life, it's only natural to think your bad thoughts and feelings will last forever.
Because that's your current perspective. That's where you are in the present moment.
Why are you having such an awful experience?
It doesn't seem fair, does it?
The world can be horribly cruel, can't it?
I realized something incredibly important when I was going through my most difficult moments.
Something I didn't expect to learn.
I learned this:
It was not my fault that I was experiencing what I was experiencing. It wasn't fair, and I didn't deserve what was happening.
But still, despite it all, it was my experience to deal with.
It was mine--my responsibility. And only I could choose what to do next. Only I had the ability to keep going, to choose the direction I would point and step into the possibility of whatever might happen.
Now, this can either sound unbelievably nauseating or unbelievably reassuring and empowering.
I was in the former camp for a while. I wanted to give up. I wanted to cry and curse the world for my horrible fate.
But I kept going.
And the more times I chose to keep going, the more times I chose my only life, the more I realized my great, hidden reserves of power.
You can do this, too.
You can choose yourself when all the odds seem stacked against you.
You can choose to be in the moment, accept what's going on, and move through the pain you're feeling.
Getting Your Life Back On Track
When does a life go from being "over" to being "normal" again?
What does that even mean?
When you think about it that way, it seems almost nonsensical.
Because all of it is your life--the good, the bad, all of it.
And when you feel your life is over, it's still your life. It's still the one you have to live.
The more you commit to living it, the more you realize that you can still act during the worst moments.
You can still decide what to do next.
I hope you'll choose yourself.
I hope you'll see that your worth only increases in value when you're stuck in the terror of the worst moments of your life.
Signposts go by and you're the watcher.
But you're also the one acting in the moment.
And if you're looking for that important fork in the road...
This just might be the sign you've been looking for.
