Realizing you just failed -Big Time- is not inspiring. You feel weak and totally demoralized.
You can easily get to that critical stage where you no longer see hope or a way out.
You stare into space with vague dreams of retirement and future goals while sitting in a blah haze of pharmaceutical drugs, TV, politics, religion and routine.
If you lose yourself now — years can go by.
It looks like Alzheimer’s disease . . . the mind goes, but slowly enough that you witness your own dissolution and understand perfectly what that means.
For those who “signed up” for normalcy, it can be devastating.
Miserable comes in many forms as you start over
One, is having constrained circumstances planned out for you on how to live, work and play as you watch the envelope of opportunities you really wanted pass you by.
After an epic failure, it’s a challenge to see into your future.
Many will reach this point and give up — unless, you are consciously ready for how to reinvent yourself.
You can spend years in a stupor, then wake up to — “What the F-'k?” Then there is all kinds of trauma — drama because you never practiced change.
Who practices failure and how to come out the other side whole and good?
I think you should.
Some wait a lifetime to have a defining moment. They wait and wait.
All the while you just know you could shine again — if only someone just gave you a chance.
Remember when you were young?
When your creative non-conformity was full of infinite potential? Crazy ideas turned into stories of reality, each with its own special conclusion. No matter the risk.
It’s because you were not afraid of your creative Freedom. You always had wild seductive alternatives.
Can you stay in one place another 10 years denying your potential? — all because you no longer think you can access your brilliance?
Depressing if you hunt Freedom.
If you decide to change your life circumstances, well, I think you should do it in a grand style.
You need to plan a Mission!
The Strategy . . .
You need to go covert
I’ve learned it’s best not to stand up and announce all the change you’re planning — it will blow your whole mission. It always does.
When you first get started wasted memories and lost time are turning your guts inside out as the reality of the years of callused pain numb your thinking.
So, to begin, just start putting together a glimpse of what your revolutionary new reinvention will be.
Write, draw and collect pictures of what your Mission looks like –
It’s best if you take what I call a Monk Break to do this.
A Monk Break is going somewhere off-the-beaten path to stay in a nurturing creative place. During a Monk Break, you HAVE to go it alone. Being alone is the whole point.
It’s not easy being alone with yourself. This is where you meet your own dissolution of the past and come out the other side with new energy just waiting to take shape.
During your Monk Break, start envisioning new plans and ideas.
During this time, write your own Constitution. This is the Foundation you will live and work by. It’s like defining your own Warrior Code with new Personal Power.
Create your plans based on your personality. The world cannot help but respond to such authenticity.
Your newly defined Constitution renders all failures unimportant as you drive forward on a quest of epic proportion for new ideas.
Map out your strategy of what it will take to make each step doable.
Really DO this.
Your bravery will help you escape the conformity of the sanitized mediocrity you’ve been living.
You need to stay stealth and not let others suck your power before you are ready.
And you can’t just dabble with your new creative Freedom — it’s all or nothing. Losing it will start to make you feel crazy.
Start executing on your plan.
Remember, we are creatures of habit. Practicing new ways to focus is important.
Get out of the gym and take up something new and cool - like Kyudo — something totally out-of-the-box of how you normally live. Or, train for a marathon hike – like the Camino de Santiago in Spain.
Make it a vision quest.
The point is to do things that take you away from normal complacency.
Start practicing change and reinventing yourself in baby steps around how you live and operate. If not, you’ll stay behind with your own voice of failure as your depression sets in.
Your reinvention and new evolution will feel like a slow tragedy. I know!
You are still not announcing yourself, but people start seeing changes.
It begins to look like you’re getting something new and powerful put together. These are landmark moments.
Remember, most people just like the idea of something new — you decide to become one of the courageous and actually go do it.
As you practice change, you need to keep creating. Don’t waste your pain, use it to create new brilliance.
Slowly, start sharing time with other crazy imaginative passionate people — those driven souls who brave the complacent, celebrate risk and do not fear losing it all.
Because, it’s not all about money.
Your new Freedom will be a delicious addiction. And your loved ones that felt abandoned will appreciate the new you that is emerging.
Do whatever you need to do to grow an unshakable conviction of who you are meant to be — everything else is secondary.
Know that you’ll always be on the path — until the end of your life. There is no failure, it’s just about learning. We all know that.
It’s the flow of Yin Yang — the Law of Nature.
What you do with your new Freedom is what will define you. Richness comes through the struggle. We all know that too.
But go a step further and dive deep into the depth of it all. Wallow in it. This is true power!
Last Step:
Embrace your larger story as it begins to take shape. You are entering the Wisdom stage.
And it takes as long as it takes.
Your new story is about how people will know and see you. Let the sweet sense of discovery show up.
Now, there’s one last important part to the Mission. And you need to make sure you do this. It’s a key point.
Start planning something special to benefit all of humanity after you are gone.