Breakthrough

"A breakthrough is a moment in time when the impossible becomes possible."
- Tony Robbins


Weird isn't it?

How you can be totally snowed under by grief, remorse, guilt, the pain of things left unsaid or things you said that were wrong.. whatever impediment to your daily state of mind, isn't it incredible how consumed by negative emotions you can be without even really realising the effects it is having..

I was like that.

On the outside, at work or socialising, I may have seemed to be okay. A good guy even - a positive person. But on the inside I was fucking dying! DYING. If you're a regular reader of this blog you'll know of my battles with my mental health, my diagnosed conditions, my fight thus far in dealing with all that. And you'll know about my personal journey of self-improvement, growth and change in life, as I've touched upon many times - but, in a roundabout way, you'll know why I was dying inside.

I was consumed by my past. A lifetime of not dealing with things, or dealing with things the wrong way, or coming to the huge realisations in life yet merely skirting over them, whatever - I wasn't getting to the crux of the matter. The heart of it. I was avoiding, denying, and ignoring the simple hard facts. Ignoring the truth. And why? Simply, the eyes of fear..

You know I'd be the last to ever decry the power of therapy, talking remedies, even medications when used correctly and carefully, to treat the worst and most debilitating symptoms of stress and mental illness. These things have helped me no end, and millions of others, to live a healthier life. But, and its a BIG but, there is no substitute for grabbing the bull by the horns and just dealing with your shit, once and for all!

Don't get me wrong, this is my experience.. for many people it is not the case that they can get to a point of realisation where they know what needs to be done to transform their lives and just do it, and everything will be better with them. For so many reasons, us complex human beings sometimes just can't be 'saved' from our many issues, our complicated multiple mental illnesses, our neuroses, and these things dominate our lives and halt our progress through it.

Let me put it like this..

Some people go through life having led an idyllic existence - and are content in life, successful, happy with their lot and 'have it all' - AND there is no underlying reason or condition or illness simmering within them to screw up their lives - yet suddenly, one day, they just lose the plot. They fall apart inside, their lives come crashing down around them and they are on the floor. They've just lost it, and everything has gone to the dogs, and they just can't get it back together again.

Conversely, some people are challenged by terrible shit from day one - horribly painful childhood experiences, sometimes accompanied by physical difficulties too, suffering a lifetime of mental illness and difficulty dealing with all aspects of life, yet they somehow continue to function. They survive. They don't wither away and they don't end their own lives, BUT - and this is crucial - they can't thrive. They can't be the best version of themselves, or even hope to get on the journey to that better, higher place in their lives.

In both scenarios, the best outcome a person can hope for is to survive the ordeal. To not perish - mentally, emotionally and physically. Simply surviving is probably the best they can hope for, and whilst preferable to death, slow or sudden, their lives have either hugely diminished from what they were or they will never fulfil anything like their full potential.

What I'm saying is that my experience may be unique, but honestly, isn't it also a common one? My life up until now has been governed by the eyes of fear. Too scared to make the biggest leaps of faith, too worried about things going wrong if I make big changes.. too inhibited by my internal troubles to affect the positive changes in my life necessary to move on, succeed and finally begin to actually thrive.

Survival is not enough, is it?

It is amazing, it is powerful, and it is awesome that we all survive the stresses and strains of our lives in this crazy world we live in. That is an achievement we make every day, and we have to recognise it more. Perhaps for some, that fact really is enough. Perhaps surviving it all sustains them, and that's a great thing. Never think I don't get that. But for me, and I believe for many people, it just isn't enough to 'get by' in life. To 'just about manage'. We want more out of life..

In the last few days and weeks I made the biggest leap of faith of my whole life. I dealt with my deepest, darkest, most primal fear and I confronted it. Therapy, and self-help, and wonderful friends, family and amazing support helped me to get to this of course, but ultimately I always had to do this for myself. So I made a plan, I did what I had to do, and I fucking did it!

I knew I wasn't content to just carry on being a survivor. I knew I had to look through the eyes of hope, not the eyes of fear. I knew what I had to do to get past my shit and truly move on in my life. It was very, very hard.. but you know what?

It worked!

Everything has changed. I'm a thousand times lighter. I'm free from the weight of the baggage I've been carrying around on my shoulders all my life. I can move on. I can truly become the best version of me. I can thrive!

And somehow, even better than that, is the unexpected positive 'side-effects' of my giant leap of faith. It hasn't just helped me! It's helped my nearest and dearest. Wounds have healed and issues have resolved - as if by magic! Things are immediately beginning to all fall into place. Now it's just a matter of time, and it will filter out to positively affect everyone in my life, near and far..

That's true therapy.

Copyright ©2018 Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.

Getting There..

Success comes in many forms..

How often do we forget to recognise and celebrate our achievements, however small we might consider them in the grand scheme of things? Herein lies one of the primary reasons people can reach a stage where they feel worthless and like a failure in life. It is all too common for us to only measure success by achievements which are tangible, often material in nature. Passing an exam, getting a new job, getting married, winning an award, buying a new home - these things are rightly worth celebrating and are, of course, some measure of success in life, to some degree. Oft forgotten though are all the steps a person takes to improve themselves and their lives, and all that people do just to maintain their more tangible achievements.

So it is that we can know of people who seems to have it all - plenty of money, a great job, a nice car, a partner, a family, lots of friends etc. In considering whatever measure of success we may deem all that to be though, how often do we fail to notice how people who 'have it all' can actually be very unhappy, despite their outward appearance of success. Conversely, it is almost certain that we all know of people who seem to have very little in life - both in terms of material possessions and signs of 'achievement', yet they are content, self-assured and basically happy with their lot. This is the paradoxical nature of success. We perceive both our own and other people's success in life based on certain presumptions and preconceptions we hold about what success actually means - a faulty and immature perception indeed.

A true measure of success in life can be found in how an individual copes with adversity, how they deal with problems and pain, and how well they learn and grow with the ups and downs of life. This is why people with all the outward signs of a successful life can actually be among the most wounded and troubled souls, whilst people who live with terrible health conditions and in awful poverty and squalor can be among the most content and positive. Opportunity, money, physical beauty, intelligence, education - none of these things guarantees us success in life. In fact there are actually no guarantees at all. Only doing the hard work of growing and changing will give us the best chance of achieving anything close to true success.

“Success is not money, cars, fame or material possessions but the lives you touched positively.” - Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

Celebration of the achievements in our lives that are considered 'milestones', such as a new job, passing a test or exam, a new home, getting married, the birth of a child etc. come naturally and usually with great fanfare. Celebrating the steps we take in our personal and emotional/spiritual growth, however, more often than not seem to be almost ignored. There is a growing movement towards the marking and celebration of separation/divorce from an unhappy relationship, but on the whole it would seem that society doesn't accept the huge changes we make to better ourselves as valid or worthy of praise. This really needs to change. In our inner lives, the massive importance of marking and celebrating our achievements in learning to deal with life's difficulties and challenges cannot be overstated. We must give ourselves the credit for every step we take towards self-improvement, big or small.

There is wholly too much judgement going on with regard to personal success, and how we perceive it in others. We need to recognise that our perception of success is usually unreal, that it is born out of a collection of ideals and notions that we have been told or have decided are important in life. We need to take apart our concept of what success means and analyse each bit until we can identify and eliminate the crap, leaving only goals which truly serve us on a path to fulfilment and contentment with life. When it comes to our perception of success in others, we always need to factor in the huge weight of our biases, and our lack of a full and accurate historical picture of who that person is, and how they have come to where they are at.

Lastly, and most importantly of all, we absolutely have to avoid comparing - both one person to another, and ourselves to others. That path only ever leads to a furthering of the sense of worthlessness that we seem to have an infinite, inbuilt capacity for. We are all unique, and are made of the sum total of the personal experience held within us. We are all on a journey of one kind or another, and although sometimes we get stuck or choose the wrong path, each of our journeys is uniquely important and valid in its own right. So celebrate your true successes and let them shine for others to see, ever mindful that while you have earned the right to your success, others may not always share in your positivity.

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”  - Theodore Roosevelt


Copyright ©2018 Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.