It is always easy to be happy with all is going well. However, how do you stay positive when you are at an all-time low? when everything you have to deal with blows up in your face and just s**ts all over you. How do you find something within you to carry on, to keep pushing forward and not just stop and give up?
I have been experienced and seen a lot of things in my life. People tend to find it easy to see what is happening to someone else and think "well, if I was that person I would just.....” I was guilty of doing that when I saw the relationship between my parents. How dysfunctional it was…I was always telling my mom “If I were you wouldn’t do that for him…He treats you like crap…” or “why are you still with him? Just leave!” but it wasn’t until I got older and was able to understand more of the choices my mom made. Then when I got married and as it was running on fumes I felt how my mom did. The only difference was I didn’t have kids so it was easy for me to break it off. But it was a struggle nonetheless to make that decision.
During the divorce I was at an all-time low dealing with everything and still having to go to work pretending to be cheerful for my kids at kindergarten. Then going to teach aerial yoga and needing to stay positive to motivate my students tor each their goal; whether it was to lose weight, get stronger or getting more flexible. It was the most difficult thing that I had to do.
I am not going to lie but I was embarrassed of my situation…I was embarrassed that ME, someone who was waking up every day, motivating people to achieve their workout goals and helping kids to follow their dreams and work hard towards their ambitions…but I, I was unable to make my own personal life work. That I couldn’t have the relationship that everyone thought I had. I thought it was over, I failed at something that I NEVER ever thought I would have failed because I saw the unhealthy relationship my parents had, and that I would never be in that situation. My motivation to push myself disappeared. I stopped researching online for different exercises, stopped trying to discover new ways to make my classes interest. I was stuck….stuck thinking that I failed…
During this time my mom was just saying “stay positive”, “it will pass” and “everything is going to be okay.” These were things that left like someone pushing hot coal into my ears. I didn’t want to hear it! I was my “comfort” zone of being miserable, as if it was the punishment I deserved. But one day my sister sent me this video, “Note to Self” and i started to cry. More than I have every cried in my life. Suddenly I didn’t feel so alone anymore.
I started going on to Youtube every morning listening to motivational speeches. It was able to let me see myself, outside of my situation. Be able to have the strength to embrace what I was going through and start trying to be more positive, finding my willpower to be great at what I was doing and BELIEVE what I am teaching. That I am not going to be stuck in this “victim” mentality. Once I started doing that dealing with my divorce (though still hard) it felt a lot easier. I wasn’t going to settle for whatever just to be done with my divorce, I had more mental power to fight for what I deserved, for what I have done to try to make the marriage work, all the hours I gave to help him try to get a little step closer to his dreams, and all the times I have spent licking my own wounds when I was made to feel I didn’t do enough.
I wasn’t going to just settle for whatever came to me anymore, and it was through the words of Les Brown that summed up what I was doing to myself:
“Most people settle, What have you settled for lately? You know when you make an out of court settlement that means that you have decided to take something less than you originally wanted to get had you gone in to court and the reason that you’ve settled outside of court is because you didn’t believe that you could get it. Many of us are making an ‘In life Settlement’. We are settling for less than what we actually deserve. We don’t feel good about it but we make it work in our minds.”
November 2017, it was all finally over.
Finding a way to pull you through hard times is different for everyone. There is always a way through difficult moments, and those difficult moments will pass. One of the biggest mistakes I have made was that I became stuck and wallowed in my own misery…because it was comfortable for me at the time. Thinking I was just putting it on pause, so I didn’t have to “really” deal with it.
Difficult moments in life are the things that help you grow. Learn to embrace it no matter how bad things are, they are just bad for now…once you have embraced and accepted it, something amazing happens. Your mind is able to stay calm, and things start feeling quiet. Then the solutions/ideas will come.
It is not as easy as I have written but you first must hold on to the thought that things will pass and will get better. Then you will have set yourself a goal…to make things better…that is your goal and work towards that. Being stuck will only make matters worse as you only dig yourself deeper and deeper into the ground. When you are down on the ground you are able to see who is willing to stay to help you climb back up, you will see who is worthy of your energy/time/effort and to keep relationships with. If it wasn’t for my sister just simply sending a small clip I am sure I would have settled for something that would have eventually been another landslide for me in my future.
And thinking back on Oprah’s “Note to Self” I would being the same thing she would have done, and that tell my younger self to “RELAX” things will be okay. I will leave you with this quote from the amazing Les Brown:
“YOU CANNOT EXPECT TO ACHIEVE NEW GOALS OR MOVE BEYOND YOUR PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES UNLESS YOU CHANGE.”
