Personeum

I don’t know what it is that knocked you off your feet, but I know most of us have something sooner or later. What ever it is, I do know that the getting back up can be as hard as the falling down. But please excuse me for what may not exactly fit your situation. I’ll do my best to try to write to the middle of the normal curve. 

Here are 3 sentences that you need to say to yourself, regularly, maybe many times so that you can turn that corner in your life that you are trying to turn. Honestly, the sentences don’t go down that easily. They are hard to make stick so after each one I’ve included an expanded script that you should speak to yourself to help the sentence sink in.

Oh, and one more thing. You really should say these OUT LOUD to yourself. Right. Sorry about that. You will likely find that part strange or difficult, but I don’t make the rules. We simply need to say some things to ourselves out loud so that “the whole class” gets the message. (We are really that complicated. So what are gonna do?)

 1. You are not as different as you feel. 

So, you are ready to make the journey out of this? You are desperate to make the journey out of this? You have felt this before, the I-must-beat-this feeling. What will be different this time? I will tell you.

This time I will not leave you to do it alone. I will not forget you. I will not give up on you. I will remind you a hundred or a thousand times of things you would say you know, but have not been able to keep in your hands. I will keep picking them up when they clatter to the floor. I will pry open your fingers if I need to and give them to you again, and again, and again, until the clattering sound reminds you, not of something being lost, but of something being given and held.

You are tired, more than tired, worn, threadbare. You are afraid, at times even terrified. You are sad, hopeless, discouraged, lonely, angry, numb, guilty, ashamed.

All of those emotions and more have trudged by so often, with such heavy steps, that deep trenches, even ravines, have scarred your landscape and you despair of ever seeing the fields and meadows that are such a remote memory you wonder whose memories they are.

The depth and length of your pain has broken you off from other people, the people who live in that other world, beyond the glass wall,

…where pain hurts but is bearable,

…where disappointment stings but goes away.

I know.

Here is what I remind you of today. People feel this way, the way you do. People have felt this way and people will continue to feel this way in the future. It is a human experience. You are not as different as you feel. The glass wall is not as thick and impenetrable as it seems.

You have sustained injuries. Your design allows you to withstand injury and suffer immense pain and still recover, to still be as human as anyone else that you see around you. You are the most advanced technology we have found in the universe. It would be ok for you to trust the design a little bit more.

You still belong here on earth with everyone else. You’re still one of us. 

 2. Make your life full right now.

Yes, you have losses,

…people, opportunities, things, places.

There are things you will never get a second shot at. But don’t be so sure you know exactly which things those are. You wouldn’t want the opportunity to show up and be unprepared because you wrote it off. But you also don’t want to keep trying to relive something that you should let go of.

The fuller your life is now, the less those losses will sting. And by sting, I mean wipe you out. You know the ones.

You know how you get wiped out by wishing it had gone differently, being angry about how it went, punishing yourself or others for how it went.

Make your life full. You don’t have to convince yourself that those weren’t really losses. They were. Hurt about them when you need to but not every time you can. Because you always can.

Make your life full now.

 3. You can’t see around corners. 

Corners. Remember those?

Life has corners you can’t see around. Think of one of the times in your life when something good, very good, happened and you didn’t even see it coming. It was around the corner and you didn’t even suspect it. In fact you didn’t even know there was a corner ahead.

There are more ahead.

You may not see the corners and you certainly don’t see the good things around the other side. But that didn’t stop that good thing from coming into your life before. I guarantee you there is a corner up ahead. Don’t be so overconfident that there is no good thing around the next corner.

Remember your limitations in telling the future. And remember how caught off guard you were before by not expecting something good.

Be ready this time.