And maybe do the same for you.
🥃1/2 bottle of Passport Scotch whiskey per night
🚬3 packs of Lucky strike per day
🍝+🍚Macaroni for lunch and rice for dinner
That’s how I lived from my 20’s until I was 33.
When I was 35, my grandfather died, my girlfriend left me after a seven-year relationship, and I was kicked out of my own company.
I almost went crazy (even crazier because I have OCD).
At 37, I stopped regretting and went out to play the second part of my life with the hunger of the one unwilling to leave anything on the plate.
That is why I write.
Because it is not enough for me to get out of the well alone.
I want to help you get out of the well.
That’s why I write as if I were boxing.
Word by word, blow by blow, I want to break down the walls of your mind and make you see that you can get out of despair.
And today, I will share with you some of the phrases that have accompanied me on this path of rehabilitation. Phrases that I have written down, underlined, and pasted on my board are phrases that have saved my life somehow.
Let’s go.
1. On loosing
“Make your mess your message .”— Robin Renee Roberts.
When your life is a mess, you feel like a failure, period.
You don’t think you deserve the air you breathe. You think you’re a burden to everyone. And that there is nothing of value in you.
You identify with a modern version of King Midas, who turns everything he touches into sh*t instead gold.
You feel like a black hole that swallows everything in its path.
Realizing that my victim mode was sucking the joy out of my environment, I isolated myself for a while.
I felt like a worm, and I did as worms do: I went into my silk cocoon and isolated myself for a while to reflect.
And that isolation, in my case, was beneficial, and when I broke the chrysalis, I became a butterfly.
Becoming a butterfly did not solve all my problems, but transmuting all my miseries of worms and stopping crawling to fly as a butterfly made the difference.
I realized that my pain had value.
I could not give up; I had to look for others like me and tell them that there was hope at the end of the pain.
2. On goals
“It is precisely the possibility of realizing a dream that makes life interesting. “— Paulo Coelho.
Sometimes I have relapses, and I want to send it all to hell.
It starts like a dark voice inside my brain whispering things I’d instead not tell. That voice won’t leave me alone: it wants to drown me in its darkness.
And that’s why I have Paulo’s phrase on my blackboard: to see it every time it happens.
Why? Well, I have discovered that the best thing about having a goal is not to get rich but to progress.
As Coelho suggests, having the possibility of fulfilling a dream makes life meaningful when you can’t find it.
As Tony Robbins said, Progress = Happiness.
And the truth is that when that dark voice comes for me, the best remedy to stop listening to it is to have something to do, to FEEL THE POSSIBILITY of achieving something new.
It works.
I am sure that phrase has saved my life many times.
3. On purpose
“It is better to be wrong by going your own way than right by going someone else’s way.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866).
My life is crazy,
- I am 40 years old
- I have no girlfriend
- I have no children
- I have more than enough fingers on one hand to count my friends.
- And to top it all off, I am a writer who lives by writing (with all the uncertainty that entails).
In conclusion, my life is an emotional roller coaster.
That’s why when everything is going uphill for me, I read this phrase from another writer, the great Dostoevsky, and it inspires me to follow this path.
The writer’s path is hard. If you do a little archeology in the lives of writers, you will discover that many of them ended up crazy, others dead, and most of them ruined. But still, history remembers their names.
Why?
Because they dared to live their lives as free men and women and dared to accept the consequences.
That’s what I try to do. Live my way and accept the consequences.
Takeaway
- Your life may be a mess, but that mess can inspire others if you overcome it.
- Having the possibility of achieving something is better than achieving it because it’s the journey that matters. When you feel bad, find something to do, something you feel useful in, something you can progress in, and your discomfort will get better.
- You are only going to live once, and it is much better to live your way than someone else’s way. Because pain comes from not accepting yourself.
A virtual hug
AG
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